White Owl
by MMB
Summary: Lyle uses Sydney to play both sides against the middle. FINISHED!
1. Prologue

Disclaimer - They aren't mine, and I'm not making any money with this. I'm just borrowing them for a bit and playing with them for a bit. I'll give them back, I promise. Please don't kill me...  
  
[Author's note: I was privileged to have one of my valiant beta readers, Nans, up here for a visit with me recently. In the midst of all our fun, I took her to a place not far from here and showed her a place that I told her I'd *love* to have Sydney visit - but that I hadn't thought through a story in which to do it yet. I also told her again about my intent to do a Sydney/Lyle piece as soon as I finished other on-going projects. She came up with an idea that put the two ideas together - and over the course of the rest of that afternoon, evening and into the next morning, the two of us pounded out the main plot events of this story. I hope you enjoy our first collaborative work. - MMB]  
  
White Owl   
  
by MMB & NIOMR  
  
Prologue  
  
It was dark, and the road ahead was winding and narrow. Tendrils of ground-hugging fog floated across the roadbed, occasionally hiding the white strips down the center that were floating past underneath at a regular pace. On either side, darkness against darkness spoke of the density of an impenetrable forest that arched over the top of the roadway, blocking illuminating moonbeams or starlight.  
  
The road grew narrower and narrower, and it slowly changed from painted pavement to black asphalt, then to gravel, and finally to a parallel set of worn dirt ruts through the dark underbrush. The trees on the side pressed in closer and closer, and the few glimpses of the star-studded sky above grew rarer and rarer. The ground fog swirled just a little thicker and just a little higher, until finally nothing less than two feet high could be discerned. And yet, the perception of movement persisted.  
  
Suddenly the pressing darkness of trees began to ease, and finally the canopy of branches overhead was gone, letting the starry night sky be visible in all its glory. The ground fog lingered and swirled lazily in the openness of the secluded meadow, occasionally wafting upwards slightly where the midnight breezes would snag it and pull it into the air. All was a deafening silence - not a cricket chirped, and not a blade of grass rustled.  
  
The soft "Hoo!" of an owl shattered the silence and brought Jarod straight up in bed, his eyes peering into the darkness of his warehouse lair as if trying to discern the shape of the threat that had managed to come so close. His heart was pounding as if he'd run a marathon, and the overpowering feeling of desperation and dread hung about his mind like the persistent ground-fog of his dream had hugged the roadway. He wiped the perspiration from his face and then rose to prowl the perimeter of his lair, checking the status of the security alarms and testing the strength of the steel bar that held the heavy warehouse door shut.  
  
Eventually, he laid himself back against his pillows with a deep sigh - whatever danger he'd sense had been nothing but his own imagination. He should be used to this by now he chided himself ruefully. Nightmares had been his constant companions for the better part of his life - indeed, he could count on one hand the number of nights in the past few years that HADN'T been broken at least once by one. Remembering the details of the dream, he had a hard time even classifying this as a nightmare.  
  
And yet deep and restful sleep eluded him completely for the rest of the night.   
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	2. The Beginning of the End

White Owl   
  
by MMB & NIOMR  
  
The Beginning of the End  
  
Triumvirate Safe House  
  
California Coast  
  
May 28th  
  
He had to admit that this was a beautiful place to put a safe house - and a place he'd have to keep in mind as time moved on. Lyle couldn't help admiring the view as he drove southward toward the tiny California beach hamlet to which the Triumvirate had summoned him. The highway had just come up over a rise between two tall hills to have the entire Pacific Ocean, a deep sapphire blue, lay itself out at his feet. The hamlet itself lay between the steep hillsides and the craggy cliffs that dropped twenty feet into the surging surf below.   
  
He followed the service road past the beach cabins turned businesses, the few brick and mortar commercial buildings that had obviously been through their earthquake retrofitting from the huge bolts at regular intervals along the walls, the elementary school with its portable classrooms slowly filling what had once been playgrounds. At the stop sign by the used bookstore that looked barely large enough to have two people inside it comfortably, he turned right toward the cliffs. The houses on both sides of the street were an eclectic mixture of well-kept 1940's beach cabins and modern two-story structures doing battle for scenic views. At the end of the street was nothing but a guardrail in front of a sidewalk along the edge of the continent - and a street led off to the left that hugged the edge of the cliffs.  
  
His destination soon became readily apparent - it was one of the most magnificent houses he'd ever seen, on either side of the continent. Old and yellowing cement buttressing protected the cliff face below the house from crumbling away with the same speed that it was evidently eating into the roadway. The Tudor-style house itself was a grey-tan, stucco below with open beam work reaching two stories toward the steep, wood-shingled roof. To the left of the main building was what looked like a small lighthouse, constructed from rough-hewn stones similar to the rock that made up the cliffs. To the right, cypress trees marked the end of dry land, stretching like dark silhouettes into the sky above ragged rocks and splashing surf, one with a long rainbow-colored pennant billowing out in the ocean breezes.   
  
Lyle drove closer, and reached for the garage door opener that had been included in the packet holding his orders to come to this place on this day. A push of the button had one of three rather rustic-looking garage doors pulling open in the stonework and wood-shingled garage, revealing plenty of space within for the sleek sports car he'd chosen to use that morning in his drive down from San Francisco. How they had known that he'd decided to take a short vacation in his secret condo on the outskirts of Chinatown, he'd never know - but the voice on the phone had been insistent that he leave immediately in order to make connections with Triumvirate dignitaries who would be there for only the rest of the day.  
  
He pulled his garment bag and suitcase from the back seat where he'd tossed it so carelessly a few hours earlier and, after locating the access door at the left corner of the back of the garage, he pushed the button to close the garage door again. The door opened up to the curved stone wall of the lighthouse, with a narrow sidewalk leading toward the main house. He followed the sidewalk to a glassed sunroom with a tall, pyramid roof, where a tall and imposing African bodyguard silently pulled the door open.   
  
The bodyguard pointed to a chair, where Lyle figured he was being invited to deposit his luggage, and then waited patiently for the Centre employee to comply. Once Lyle had carefully draped his garment bag across the back of the chair and leaned his suitcase against a chair leg, the bodyguard simply gave him a curt gesture that told him to follow. The tall African led him through a sitting room and then down a short hallway and into a formal dining room where three somber men were seated at one end of the long dining table waiting for him.  
  
"Sit down, Mr. Lyle," the eldest at the very head of the table said in an accent that was as unidentifiable as it was musical. Lyle, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and more than a little nervous, pulled out the nearest chair at the opposite end of the table and took a seat, folding his hands quietly in front of him and unconsciously rubbing his right index finger over the stump that was all that was left of his left thumb. It was itching, and that was never a good sign.  
  
"The Triumvirate has been keeping a very close eye on the Centre of late. We have had reason to believe that there might be a few employees working there who have questionable loyalties..."  
  
He couldn't help it - just being in the presence of these powerful men who had always held complete control of his destiny meant that he just had to make sure of his own position. He hadn't done anything RECENTLY that would have called the attention of the Triumvirate to him that he knew of - and he hadn't been in San Francisco long enough to even get started on a new Hunt... "Surely MY loyalties are beyond reproach," Lyle complained immediately in a voice of bravado that did a very poor job hiding insecurity. "I've done everything you people have ever asked of me..."  
  
"Your actions and... appetites... have tended to keep you under constant surveillance to make sure that you cause neither the Centre or the Triumvirate any undue scrutiny by law enforcement," the youngest man at the table commented dryly. Lyle shivered at the thought that the Triumvirate knew exactly where and what he was up to, even when he was engaging in The Hunt. "But you were not summoned here to explain or excuse your own actions. We are here to discuss Dr. Sydney Green."  
  
"Sydney!" Lyle sat up straighter, both in relief and in surprise.   
  
"We have been re-assessing his loyalty as evidenced by his behavior since the beginning of the search for the escaped Pretender, Jarod, and we have decided that what we have been seeing lately is no longer acceptable. He is now viewed as a potential security risk."   
  
"Sydney has enjoyed the protection of the Parker administration for a long time," Lyle stated slowly, "but I have wondered for a very long time..."  
  
"Enough!" the oldest barked abruptly. "Kindly save us your protestations of suspicion, Mr. Lyle. You are here to listen and then do as you're told, not talk. Is that understood?"  
  
"Yes, sir." His stump was beginning to itch again - badly.  
  
"Dr. Green has several times interfered with attempts by Centre operatives to shoot Jarod and bring him in, wounded but alive - but those episodes had been overlooked due to connection that he represents to Jarod. Then came the assassination attempt on Mr. Raines. We know that officially there has been no assignation of blame in that incident, but our independent assessment team has determined that Dr. Green was the only person present at the time with both the motive and means to make that shot." The older man's gnarled hands shifted papers on the table in front of him. "Then there was that bombing on SL-27..."  
  
"Uh..." Lyle was beginning to sweat. "My findings exonerated Sydney from any part in..."  
  
"Your findings," the older man snapped impatiently, "were an obvious ploy to manipulate Dr. Green and had very little to do with any genuine investigation into the incident. Miss Parker's report, which you tried to sweep under the rug, was far more complete, comprehensive, and believable. That Mr. Parker decided to back your plan was unfortunate, because your record in retrieving Jarod isn't a whole lot better than Miss Parker's is - and hers is abysmal."  
  
Lyle squirmed in his seat. He didn't appreciate his lack of success where it came to Jarod to be continually thrown in his face - not by Mr. Raines, and certainly not by the Triumvirate - but he knew better than to argue. It was the truth, as uncomfortable as that made him.  
  
"What you may NOT be aware of is the role Dr. Green played in managing to free the clone - I believe the Centre called him Gemini. One of our surveillance team acquired the transcript of a phone call between Dr. Green and Jarod that led Jarod directly to a file buried in the Centre mainframe that detailed where the clone was being housed and transfer plans to move him back to Africa."  
  
"I'll be damned," Lyle shook his head. "Sydney, you sly dog..."  
  
"Mr. Lyle, subterfuge is NOT an admirable trait," the younger man at the elder's left stated in a distinctly disapproving tone. "All of these findings, when looked at as a general pattern of behavior, caused a great deal of consternation among the members of the consortium. Dr. Green had, prior to Jarod's escape, been a top contributor both to the financial health of the Centre and to the influence both the Centre and the Triumvirate have acquired in many areas of international politics and trade. When a man such as that - a man who, due to his relationship with the Parker family and regime, has enjoyed almost unlimited access to every level of Centre operations - begins to behave in a less than loyal manner, some kind of action MUST be taken. We have considered the matter very carefully."  
  
"Dr. Sydney Green knows far too much about Centre activities and methods to be allowed or even forced to just retire," the eldest pronounced in a sepulchral voice. "His obvious loyalty to Jarod over and above the interests of the Centre cannot be ignored. We debated this long and hard, and eventually made the decision to remove Dr. Green as a potential problem."  
  
Lyle's eyebrows soared. "Remove?"  
  
The oldest man at the table was obviously ready to take over the rest of the meeting. "Luckily, the Centre hierarchy has recently been putting in place certain failsafe measures to protect the security of the Centre from those who would betray it from within - and we are more than willing to take advantage of these measures in the case of Dr. Green."  
  
"What kind of measures are those?" Lyle was curious now - perhaps he could learn something that he could make use of a little later on to vouchsafe his own eventual rise to the Chairmanship of the Centre.  
  
"Many key Centre employees have received gastric implants containing poison during otherwise routine or emergency medical procedures that took place at the Centre itself. Releasing the poison would be a simple matter of administering a simple combination of chemicals in a precise dosage that would radically increase the acidity level of the stomach, causing the casing of the implant to dissolve. Dr. Green received one of these implants while he was recovering from the effects of his bombing attempt. We have decided that the time has come to trigger his implant under controlled circumstances. Once the poison is released, there is no antidote, and death occurs within twelve hours."  
  
Lyle struggled to keep private the feelings of horror and worry that he, too, had received one of these implants - perhaps while in surgery in the Renewal Wing to close the wound left when he'd lost his thumb to the Yakuza. "So... That's something that's already done - what do you need ME for?"  
  
"We don't want Dr Green's death to cause any questions - especially not among his friends at the Centre or with Jarod himself - at least, not for a short while. One of the many elements of the particular poison in the implant is that it decomposes chemically within two hours after death. This assures that any unsuspecting coroner will mark down the cause of death as heart attack." The older man grinned coldly. "What WOULD cause commentary, however, would be the symptoms as the poison began to work. THAT'S where you come in. Dr. Green's departure from the Centre and his regular companions must not cause undo comment - and that is something we have already put into motion. YOUR task, when the time comes, will be to isolate him completely as the implant dissolves through when the poison has done its work, at which time you will call the authorities and let them take care of things from there."  
  
Lyle had to admit that there was a simple elegance to this plan, and he certainly didn't have any trouble with the idea of getting rid of the pesky and secretive psychiatrist and mentor. He had always considered that Sydney had far too much influence over Miss Parker as it was. Without that Belgian voice of caution and suspicion whispering in her ear, maybe they'd finally be able to put together some kind of relationship as siblings...  
  
Still, there was the implementation of the plan to consider - and the biggest obstacle to the success was Sydney himself. "How do you expect me to lure Sydney away from the Centre? The man isn't dumb, and he suspects everything I say or do..." Lyle spread his hands open at the table in front of him.   
  
With an abbreviated gesture, the elder had the taciturn bodyguard behind Lyle move forward to hand him a folder. Lyle stared at the dour faces ahead of him, and then opened the folder to find himself looking at a brochure publicizing a psychiatric symposium to be held in about a month's time in a town only minutes away from this very safe house. "We have taken care of that part of things," the elder told Lyle matter-of-factly. "In years past, every time Mr. Raines proposed an interesting study that required the use of Jarod without the protection or interference of his mentor, we would assist him by sponsoring a seminar or convention that Dr. Green would be interested in attending. We then made sure that he was convinced of the benefit of attending by smoothing away any obstacles to his willing compliance. Since Jarod's escape, however, we've had no reason to put together such a ruse again - until now."  
  
Lyle opened the brochure and began chuckling in appreciation. This was SURE to do the trick! The topic of the symposium was psychiatric and psychological studies dealing with identical twins - with Dr. Sydney Green scheduled to present a paper on his findings based on a study to be published soon in a premier psychiatric journal. Lyle raised his eyes to the men at the end of the table.   
  
"The study is legit? He really is going to publish...?"  
  
"Oh yes, Mr. Lyle. Both the study and the paper are quite legitimate. As the silent partner of the publishing company that owns that particular journal, we were alerted ahead of time of the intent to publish Dr. Green's research paper - and we made it known that we wished that it be accepted. And for all intents and purposes otherwise, the symposium itself is quite legitimate as well. All of those chosen to receive invitations as either speakers or attendees will be pre-eminent psychiatrists and psychologists in their fields of research - and all of them either have outstanding debts to the Triumvirate or work for us in one way or another." The elder nodded. "As a matter of fact, Dr. Green is fairly familiar with several of them from his attendance at previous events we arranged in the past. There will be no reason to raise his suspicions at all."  
  
"This should work, then," Lyle commented with a grin of confidence. "And once he gets to the conference center..."  
  
"No. It is important that he attend the Friday night formal dinner, for that is when the chemical trigger will be administered - in the pilaf. You will find a way to draw him away from the conference sometime shortly after that and then isolate him until the poison has done its work. We will leave the details of THAT to you." The nameless trio at the end of the table rose in unison. "But be warned, Mr. Lyle. This is a Triumvirate sanction - Mr. Raines is and must remain out of the loop to give the Centre and its administration complete deniability. What is more, there is a definite time frame in which you'll need to take action - once Dr. Green has eaten his dinner, he will begin displaying symptoms of extreme heartburn within three to four hours. From that point, you will have between twelve to fourteen hours before the poison will have been released and caused his death. Our biochemical advisors recommend that you isolate him prior to the heartburn symptoms becoming acute so as to cause as little commentary as possible. Whatever you do, you will be expected to handle any complications that might arise on your own WITHOUT any outside help. Once the Friday night dinner is concluded, our direct involvement in the fate of Dr. Green is concluded as well - you will succeed or fail on your own merits, and nothing less than total success will be an acceptable outcome."  
  
"You can count on me..." Lyle began his confident spiel, only to have the eldest man hold up a silencing hand.  
  
"Save the bravado. Just be assured that failure will not be tolerated at all - and no excuses, however reasonable otherwise, will be acceptable. We need this sanction to happen quietly and without any official notice whatsoever. If you cannot handle this small matter for us in a timely and understated manner, your usefulness to the Triumvirate will come under a similar re-evaluation as Dr. Green's." A chill ran up Lyle's spine. "Do we understand each other?"  
  
"Perfectly, sir." Lyle understood something else perfectly clearly: he needed to have a complete physical - including x-rays - from a non-Centre-related physician in the very near future. He was damned if HE was going to have someone decide to have HIS morning coffee chemically spiked and then supposedly die of a heart attack after eight to ten hours of agony.  
  
"You are welcome to the use of the facilities here for the rest of the day and evening." The trio inclined their heads in unison. "Mr. Lyle..." They turned as one and moved in stately and determined steps from the room.  
  
"Your room is this way, sir," the bodyguard said in musical African accents, breaking the silence that had fallen with the Triumvirate departure.   
  
Lyle blinked and followed the man obediently, his mind only partially involved in paying attention to the layout of the beautiful house or even noticing that the bodyguard had retrieved his luggage. But by the time the bodyguard had shown him up the stairs and to the door of a spacious bedroom, however, Lyle was beginning to feel a sort of inner elation. He nodded curtly to the African as he pushed past into the room and closed the door firmly behind himself, then tossed his suitcase on the bed with a silent whoop.  
  
This was it - the opportunity of a lifetime! Sydney may be a pain in the ass and not long for this world, but he was also one of the best ways to get to Jarod. Miss Parker had never fully appreciated the resource that she'd had at her beck and call all this time, and his own previous attempt to get to Sydney through Sydney's son, Nicholas - and in that way snare Jarod - had failed miserably. But now that the Triumvirate had spoken and removed all sense of reprisal should the Belgian scientist come to a bad end in the process, Lyle could use him as bait for a trap even as he expired. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! What better way to cement his own position of power not only within the Centre but within the Triumvirate but by executing termination orders for Sydney and using the threat to Sydney as bait in the trap to bring Jarod back to the Centre once and for all?  
  
Now all he had to do was figure out how to build the trap in a way that didn't doom the entire effort, and himself right along with it...  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
The fog was so thick that it was like walking into a pillow fight. Wisps of the white stuff swirled around each and every step taken, giving lie to the sensation of solid ground beneath the feet. The fog was everywhere, below the feet, above the head, to every side as far as the eye could see, and yet perception of movement was continual, steady. Every once in a while, a barren tree branch would begin to form somewhere behind the white mist, reaching out a gnarled and grasping claw as if to snag on a shirt. A few more steps, and the ghostly hand had faded once more behind the billowing veil of white.  
  
Slowly the fog began to thin, until finally more and more ghostly branches and twigs could be seen. There was an entire forest on all sides, blasted and sere, not a bud or blade of grass to give sign of any life. The fog was now like a ripped curtain, shreds of it hanging desperately to gnarled roots and fluttering in the upper branches.  
  
The "Hooo!" of an owl brought Jarod up out of a sound sleep, panting as if he'd been running for an hour. In the darkness of his warehouse, the feeling of dread and danger was almost palpable. Jarod shuddered in the night air; his mind still caught enough in the environment of his dream that he could almost feel the damp whisper of fog draping his shoulders. He wiped at his face with a hand, surprised to pull it away covered in perspiration. As had become his habit of late, he rose and paced the perimeter of his warehouse den, checking security alarms and making sure that locks and bars were all sturdily in place.  
  
The Pretender frowned as he sat back down heavily on the edge of his bed. This was the third such dream that had shattered what would otherwise have been a peaceful night's sleep - three dreams all being broken by the sound of an owl in his ear, startling him. He shook his head and lay back against his pillow, staring up into the darkness at the high ceiling that he knew was up there somewhere.  
  
And just as it had happened the last two times, he got no more sleep that night.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware  
  
The Centre: SL-15  
  
June 3  
  
"Yes! Here it is!" Sydney pounced on the envelope in his in-box like a cat nailing a mouse and whipped his letter opener out of his desk drawer to slit the envelope open. He pulled the letter out and read it immediately, then settled back in his desk chair fanning himself with the letter, his face that of the satiated cat who had not only nailed a mouse, but a canary too.  
  
"Hey, Syd," commented a softer voice from just outside the office door, and then the balding head of the computer technician that was the third member of the team hunting Jarod poked around the doorjamb. "You don't often whoop loudly enough to be heard from the front of the Sim Lab..."  
  
"I don't often get a research paper published in one of THE pre-eminent psychiatric journals either," Sydney announced with a grin of pride lighting his face. He waved the letter in his friend's direction. "And yet, it seems, my latest paper has been accepted for publication in the next quarterly edition."  
  
Broots' grin widened. "You're kidding? Really? That's pretty cool, Syd!"  
  
The psychiatrist's greying eyebrows made a quick journey up his forehead and then back down again. "Mon ami, 'cool' doesn't BEGIN to cover it!" He folded the letter very carefully and slipped it neatly back into its envelope, his grin of delight still broad. Then he quickly disciplined his attitude back to its normal scientific objectivity and turned his gaze back up into his friend and colleague's face. "Is there something you needed, Broots?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. Miss Parker wanted me to see if you'd finished that report on the timeframes yet."  
  
"I finished that just this afternoon," Sydney commented dryly, sorting through his outbox for the folder with the requested report - another piece of busywork that was the Centre misusing his training and expertise yet again. "You know, one of these days, Broots, I swear I'll get asked to do some genuine analytical research on the emerging patterns in Jarod's behavior, and I'm going to have a heart attack from the shock." His face while handing over the folder was frustrated. "If they wanted an analysis of the time frames that Jarod uses to decide which Pretend to do as opposed to the clues he leaves behind for us, they could call in an efficiency expert!"  
  
"Uh-uh, Freud. When it comes to Jarod, we all know YOU'RE the expert." Miss Parker's semi-sarcastic tone preceded her through the office door. She glared down at Broots. "Is that the report I asked you to bring to me over an HOUR ago?"  
  
"Y...yes, ma'am," Broots stammered, immediately thrusting the folder out and nearly spilling its contents when his rough gesture rammed the folder into Miss Parker's upper arm. "Oh, s...sorry..."  
  
"And weren't YOU supposed to have a report on the times and purposes of Jarod's hacking into the Centre mainframe on my desk at about the same time?" She put a hand at her hip and put all her weight on that one leg, her traditional "let's see how well we can rattle Broots' cage today" stance.  
  
"I...It's almost ready..." Broots whimpered, casting a shy and frightened glance at Sydney, who merely raised patient and mildly disapproving chestnut eyes to look at his nominal boss. Seeing that he wouldn't at least be getting any verbal backup from the Belgian today, Broots scampered through the door and then out of the Sim Lab as if chased by wolves.  
  
"Really, Parker, Broots was just..." Sydney began chiding her gently.  
  
"Stow it, Sydney." She wasn't taking any constructive criticism today. "Raines is breathing down my neck for these reports; and, as you know, the cliché rightfully goes, 'shit rolls downhill.'"  
  
"And still only manages to make a mess in the end," he added in a dry tone. "Raines demanding reports is nothing new around here - his 'breathing down your neck,' as you put it, is an everyday occurrence. Admit it, Parker, you simply enjoy bullying the man to watch his reaction."  
  
Grey eyes met his sharply and found that he simply continued to gaze calmly and directly at her. Whether she was willing to listen to constructive criticism or not today, he wasn't backing down from offering it one way or the other. "We all have our little vices," she tossed off nonchalantly, smarting under the barb more because she didn't like the ugly little truth he'd spoken.  
  
"As long as you recognize it as a vice and not admirable or acceptable behavior," he retorted evenly, turning away from her and punching the power button on his computer terminal. "Is there anything else you want of me?" he asked finally, swiveling his chair around so he could look at her again - his action speaking clearly of afterthought.  
  
Miss Parker had to admire the way her attitude and behavior generally just bounced off of him as if he were made of Teflon. Sydney was one of the few people whom she could NOT intimidate or move unless he was convinced she was justified in her demand. He was also the only person at the Centre she knew now - other than Raines and her demon-twin Lyle - who felt no hesitation whatsoever to be as dismissive of her when he was displeased with her as she could be of him under similar circumstances. It rankled when it happened - but it was also the basis of a strange intimacy and respect between them that was the closest thing she had felt to kinship in years now.  
  
"A little more timeliness in submitting your reports would be nice," she shrugged at him, trying to act as blasé as he seemed to be.  
  
His response was simply to turn back to his computer terminal and begin to type in the newest data from his current study, letting her presence in his office no longer register in his mind at all. This latest study measuring the difference between the bond developed by identical twins with that of fraternal twins promised to be more groundbreaking research that might earn him a second by-line in the psychiatric journal later on. He might no longer be earning kudos with his research papers dealing with the consequences of genius in carefully monitored situations, but the letter in his pocket told him that he wasn't falling behind when it came to still doing valuable research of some interest to the scientific community.   
  
Miss Parker watched with a quiet and normally disguised look of fondness on her face as he narrowed his focus of concentration to the stream of words flowing through his fingers to the keyboard and onto his monitor screen. After a few moments, she shook herself out of her reverie and left him typing away contentedly.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware  
  
The Centre: Chairman's Office  
  
June 17  
  
"Absolutely not!"  
  
Inwardly, Sydney seethed. This was the chance of a lifetime to bask in a little bit of peer esteem. Now, it seemed, the cantankerous nature of his questionably sane superior seemed destined to put a serious kink in his plans. The psychiatrist carefully disciplined both his facial expression and his tone of voice into studious neutrality. "May I inquire why you cannot spare me for the extended weekend? Just what is it that I do around here that is so indispensable and vital that I cannot take a four-day weekend to attend a symposium as keynote speaker?"  
  
"You forget," Raines wheezed, then pulled noisily on his oxygen tank to continue, "that your first and foremost job..." another wheeze, "is to aid in recapturing Jarod..."  
  
"A task, I might point out, that has not needed much of my attention for weeks," Sydney retorted pointedly. "Jarod has virtually stopped leaving us breadcrumbs to follow, and seems to have mastered the art of avoiding most of Mr. Broots' attempts to track him. *I* have had nothing to contribute to that for weeks."  
  
"Still..." Raines gasped noisily.  
  
"IF I may," Lyle insinuated smoothly, giving both Raines and Sydney the opportunity to turn and glare at his audacity, "Sydney has a point, 'Dad.' He's been spending more time with the research we've assigned him in the interim than with psychoanalyzing Jarod's pretends and clues. What is it going to hurt to let him bring a little reflected glory to the Centre's Psychogenics Department by letting him give his speech?"  
  
Raines glared at Sydney as if his ability to write a paper deemed worth for publication was a deliberate attempt to double-cross Centre agendas. "The Centre doesn't need reflected glory..."  
  
"But it can use it," Lyle insisted persuasively.   
  
"What's more, my having to decline due to job constraints won't go over well," Sydney added sharply. "I have been forced to miss any number of these events in recent years. What if one of the discussions that I miss would give me a key to knowing how Jarod thinks BEFORE he thinks?"  
  
Raines shifted his disgruntled glare from Sydney to Lyle and then back again, feeling distinctly manipulated. "I still don't like the timing," he wheezed and then drew in a noisy breath, "and against my better judgment, I guess I have to approve. BUT..." He shook a skeletal finger in Sydney's direction. "If we get one word - one peep - about a location for Jarod, you are to join your group immediately. Is that clear?"  
  
"Crystal," Sydney refrained from allowing the slightest hint or tone of triumph to seep into his voice or demeanor. "And I understand that you expect me to be on a Centre jet heading back to Delaware the moment the symposium is concluded."  
  
The Chairman drew in another noisy breath, only to let it out in an equally noisy sigh of frustration. "And just when is it that we're going to have to do without your expertise for a weekend?"  
  
"I would be leaving for California on the 26th of this month," Sydney answered smoothly.   
  
"I expect nothing less than your full attention to your work..." Raines gasped in his oxygen deeply, "...until that day."  
  
"Of course," the psychiatrist agreed easily.   
  
"And you will inform your fellow team members of your plans."  
  
"Understood." Sydney sighed inwardly. A meeting with Raines always ended this way: with infinite trivial instructions that normally would be understood implicitly as part of his regular duties and responsibilities. Raines simply couldn't help micromanaging every thing and everybody - probably a compensating mechanism for his physical disability.  
  
"Very well," the bald man waved his bony hand dismissively at both Sydney and Lyle. "Go on. I have work to do."  
  
"Yes, sir." Sydney gave a slight bow and turned on his heel to walk calmly through the etched glass doors, waiting long enough and holding the door to let Lyle out after him. "Why?" he demanded the moment they were alone in the corridor.  
  
"Why what?" Lyle blinked and looked at Sydney with a deceptively innocent gaze.  
  
"Why did you convince him to let me go?" There was something up, Sydney concluded, if Lyle threw his weight behind his getting that weekend off. Lyle never did ANYTHING that didn't serve an agenda in one way or another...  
  
The younger Parker simply shook his head and shrugged. "I just couldn't see 'Dad' standing in your way over nothing," he lied smoothly. "You were right to point out that we're not exactly swimming in information about Jarod lately, and that your giving that speech would be a feather in the Centre's cap."  
  
Sydney narrowed his eyes and gazed hard at the younger man, as if he could by force of will plumb Lyle's devious mind. Frustrated when the only thing he could discern from the younger man was patently false innocence and camaraderie, he sniffed and turned away to the elevator.   
  
Lyle watched the Belgian psychiatrist step into the elevator car, push the button and then stare at him with mild suspicion until the silver door slid closed in front of him, at which time his face broke into a satisfied and predatory grin. Things were moving along right on cue - and, as ordered, Raines was none the wiser. Sydney was suspicious, but his pride at being tapped for the speech would prevent him from acting on that suspicion until it was far too late.  
  
The younger Parker turned on his heel and headed down the corridor and past his newest Chinese secretary, giving the girl a wicked wink. He then closed his office door tightly and sat down at his desk to stare down at the newspaper. It was the local paper to the resort area of coastal California where the symposium had been arranged - and local to the safe house he'd visited only weeks ago. And on an inside page of the front section, there was a picture of one of the local artists standing in front of a Children's Art Gallery that she was sponsoring. Her face was perfect - the quintessential Chinese beauty.  
  
Lori Cheung - yes! She would be perfect as additional bait for BOTH Sydney and Jarod - and a perfect prey for a Hunt. With his trip to San Francisco so rudely and suddenly disrupted, leaving not enough time to target anyone for proper stalking, he was feeling distinctly deprived - and hungry.  
  
Lyle lifted the telephone receiver. "Mei-La," he greeted the accented voice that picked up immediately - Chinese secretaries were always SO much more efficient - "put me through to Chavez in the Los Angeles office. Now, please."  
  
"Yes, Mr. Lyle. Right away."  
  
It was time to begin to build the web that would catch a Pretender and beat that damned shrink at his own game in the process.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware  
  
Sydney's home  
  
June 20  
  
"This is Sydney."  
  
"It's me."  
  
Sydney relaxed back into his easy chair. "Jarod! Good to hear your voice."  
  
"Tell me something..."  
  
A brief frown crossed the silver-haired psychiatrist's face. "You sound troubled this evening. What is it?"  
  
"How do you... when something you work so hard at doesn't work..." Jarod was having trouble organizing his thoughts - his mind filled with the cries of horror and grief that had accompanied the denouement of his latest Pretend. They were cries that he'd tried so very hard to prevent... "When something you do goes terribly wrong, how do you live with the pain of knowing..."  
  
"What went wrong - was it directly your fault?" Sydney asked patiently, firmly steering his mind away from his own complicity in the immense suffering Jarod had survived at the Centre so that he could hear what his Pretender was telling him.  
  
"Not really, although I contributed in the end." The Pretender's eyes found again the newspaper photograph of the mother and her son who had died so tragically - and futilely. Pressure he had put on the people to whom her deadbeat husband had owed money had resulted in them putting even more pressure on her as widow, until taking the life of her son and then her own to escape their threats had been her only solution. Two innocent people had died even as the loan sharks who had been killing them slowly were being loaded into police cars across town.  
  
Sydney closed his eyes. Yes, he understood all too well the pain of being indirectly responsible. "Was there nothing you could do to prevent it?" he pressed gently, again trying to keep his mind on the situation at hand.  
  
"I didn't know until it was too late." Jarod's voice was bleak, heartbroken.  
  
"Jarod, you cannot reasonably take responsibility for what others do," the psychiatrist soothed into the phone. "You are responsible for your actions, and for the consequences of your actions..."  
  
"Even if those consequences are that innocent people die?"  
  
"Did you kill them yourself?" Sydney decided to take the direct approach.  
  
"No..."  
  
"Did you tell someone else TO kill them?"  
  
"No, but..."  
  
"Was their death in your plans at all?"  
  
"Of course not!" Jarod was indignant.  
  
"Was their death considered a risk in the situation at all?"  
  
"No," Jarod's voice now had a guilty overtone. "I didn't see it coming at all."  
  
"You mean you're not psychic, and you can't see into the future?"  
  
Jarod sighed in frustration. "I'm a Pretender, Sydney. You trained me to see all of the possibilities in a situation..."  
  
"You're also human, Jarod. Humans make mistakes."  
  
"Mistakes get people killed."  
  
Now it was Sydney's turn to sigh. "Yes, sometimes they do. But when you're not directly responsible, you simply cannot allow grief and guilt to eat you from within. You assess where it was that you erred, and make that death an object lesson that saves lives as a consequence. If your complicity is indirect, then it is up to YOU to give that indirect responsibility meaning."  
  
Jarod was silent, and Sydney sat patiently. This, too, was part of the process the two of them had developed over the years Jarod had been free. Sydney would offer the key piece of advice, and Jarod would think it through for a while before commenting. Finally: "I'm not sleeping well either lately..."  
  
Sydney frowned again. "Do you know why?"  
  
"I'm having the strangest of dreams. As a rule, I can't remember the details except that I'm moving through a fog. I'm alone, and I think I'm lost. Then this owl hoots in my ear, and I wake up panting as if I'd just run a mile and sweating..." He paused to collect himself. "I get the strangest feeling of danger, and I have to get up and make sure I'm secure - and I can't get back to sleep. What does it mean, Sydney?"  
  
"Did your dreams begin after this latest situation went bad?"  
  
"Uh-uhn. Before that."  
  
Sydney rubbed his finger under his nose thoughtfully. "Dream imagery and meaning has been a field of some speculation for a long time, Jarod. The need to get up and make sure of your surroundings could be simple paranoia left over from living at the Centre for all those years."  
  
"I know that," Jarod interrupted. "But this thing about the owl waking me up. That's the part I don't understand."  
  
"Tell you what - I'll do a little digging through my old textbooks and see what I can come up with," Sydney suggested. "The answer could be there, or it could be perhaps in a book of folklore. Give me a few days, and then call me back. I'll tell you what I know."  
  
"Thanks, Sydney." Jarod sounded a little more settled than he had at the beginning of the call.  
  
"Oh, and Jarod? Will you be leaving us any indication at all..."  
  
"Is Miss Parker getting hungry for clues?" Now Jarod sounded amused.   
  
"Having at least a little something would keep Mr. Raines off of her neck - which would have a consequence of keeping Miss Parker off of mine," Sydney's voice smiled back.  
  
"I'll see what I can do," Jarod said absently, "but to be honest, I'm getting tired of the game."  
  
"Well, don't leave anything if you don't want to," Sydney conceded, "and for God's sake, don't start leaving clues next weekend. I'm scheduled to give a speech in California at a psychiatric symposium, and I'd hate to have to cancel at the last minute."  
  
"You talked Raines into giving you time off?" Jarod sounded impressed. "You haven't gone to one of those things..."  
  
"I know, since you escaped. That's why I don't want to miss this one. I managed to get one of my papers published and now have been invited to give a speech based on it as a keynote address. This is... my chance, Jarod..." Sydney could only hope that Jarod had enough of a scientist's heart to understand what was, to him, at stake.  
  
"Don't worry, Sydney. I won't mess up your vacation."  
  
The psychiatrist breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks."  
  
"I'll call back about the owl." Jarod punched the button on his cell phone and disconnected the call.  
  
Something Sydney had said had raised a small warning flag in the back of his mind. Sydney HADN'T been invited to or gone to any psychiatric symposium or conference since long before his escape. Those he had gone to back when had very conveniently been timed so that rather than getting a short respite himself, Raines or Lyle had made use of Sydney's absence to test out all kinds of horrific and painful theories on him. The memory of some of them could still cause nightmares that made him wake up screaming.  
  
Which begged the question: why would Raines or Lyle want Sydney out of the way NOW?  
  
Jarod began booting his laptop. Maybe digging into this would get his mind off of that mother and child...  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Miss Parker pulled her sleek, black Boxster into its customary spot behind her house and turned off the engine. She took a long, deep breath and relaxed against the headrest. It had been a very long day, and between Lyle's poking into all kinds of matters that didn't concern him and a two-hour-long meeting with Raines, it was already dark outside before she'd left the Centre garage structure.  
  
She couldn't help it if Jarod wasn't leaving the slightest sign of what he was up to anymore - and just exactly why Raines expected her to find a man smart enough to just vanish whenever he felt like it was beyond her. Broots' complicated computer system wasn't finding any recent hacks into the Centre mainframe, and Sydney was far too involved with his twins research when she didn't have anything for him to analyze. I need a vacation, she thought to herself as she climbed wearily from behind the wheel and then reached behind the seat for her briefcase.  
  
The "Hoo!" of the owl sounded close behind her, making her start and straighten quickly. A blur of white and grey feathers was all she could see - evidently it had swooped down at her and now was flying off in the general direction of town. Still, the shock of the owl's call sounding so close in her ear had her heart pounding hard in her chest.   
  
"Shit!" she bit out and slammed the car door shut. What a lousy end to a perfectly lousy day!   
  
God, she needed a drink!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Long Beach, California  
  
Warehouse District  
  
June 24  
  
Jarod settled back into his chair and stared at the laptop screen with a smile on his face. So Sydney really WAS going to be published - all that work on twins research was finally going to pay off for the old psychiatrist. Jarod felt a rush of pride at the thought that Sydney would finally start to get some of the recognition outside the Centre walls that he'd deserved for a long time. And to be published in such a pre-eminent journal - no wonder Sydney hadn't wanted him to drop breadcrumbs and blow the vacation and exposure the publication of his paper had brought to him.  
  
Still, he hadn't been able to nail down the group that was sponsoring the symposium his mentor had mentioned. While not exactly frequent, there were enough conventions and symposiums being carried out across the country on any given weekend that it would take time to figure out just which one he'd been invited to. Jarod smirked. Sydney moving outside Centre circles and attending a public symposium was just too good an opportunity to let slide. But he'd need more information - information that he could no doubt get from Sydney himself, if he asked the right questions in the right way.  
  
He picked up the telephone...  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware  
  
The Centre: SL-15  
  
June 24  
  
Miss Parker walked through the front door of the Sim Lab, not at all happy with the message she'd been sent to deliver. She hadn't seen Sydney genuinely angry for a very long time - asking him to essentially redo several days' worth of statistical busywork when he had research subjects to investigate was guaranteed to remedy that deficiency. It was mid-afternoon, long after most research subjects had been sent home so the researcher could begin to tabulate his data. With any luck, nobody else would witness the explosion. As she neared the door to his office, she heard his phone ring.  
  
Sydney barely even looked up from his review of his notes and a draft of his finished paper as he picked up the receiver. "This is Sydney," he answered mechanically.  
  
The familiar voice resonated in the handset. "Did you find out anything about owls and dreams, Sydney?"  
  
"Jarod!" Sydney put his pen down and stretched back in his comfortable office chair, the telephone receiver pressed against his head. The call was well-timed; he could use the break.  
  
"Incidentally, I checked up on your article in the journal - that was a good, solid piece of research. Congratulations on the publication AND your invitation to the symposium!"  
  
Sydney grinned. "Thanks. It feels good to know that all these past few years' worth of experimentation hasn't been for naught... It isn't often one gets one's paper printed in Modern Psychiatric..."  
  
Miss Parker's eyebrows raised, and she paused just out of sight and considered. Sometimes subterfuge and eavesdropping had their uses. So, the old goat finally got a paper published. She made sure she was out of sight and focused her attention tightly on what Sydney was saying to his trained monkey on the other end of the phone.  
  
Jarod could hear how proud his mentor was of his accomplishment. "That was a minor coup," his voice through the receiver communicated his delight, "but tell me more about the speech you were telling me about.  
  
Sydney's wide smile was positively preening. "I don't know how they heard about it, or got an advanced copy of the article, but I got an invitation from the West Coast Psychiatric Society about a week ago to give a keynote address at their symposium in Santa Luisita the last weekend of this month. Needless to say I was flabbergasted and honored, and I accepted immediately."  
  
Miss Parker's jaw dropped and her brows collided swiftly. Sydney was taking time off to go give a speech based on the paper he'd published - and he hadn't said anything about either event to her? He'd brag to Jarod, but not to her? That stung...  
  
"You deserve to be recognized," was Jarod's reply. Jarod was taking notes on a post-it. "So when do you leave?"  
  
"The day after tomorrow," the psychiatrist reminded his protégé pointedly. "The symposium gets started with a dinner Friday night, and then goes through Sunday lunch. My speech is scheduled for late Saturday afternoon."  
  
Now Miss Parker seethed. Not only was Sydney going to be taking time off, but also his departure was very short notice. Briefly she considered just what it would take to teach Freud a good lesson about what happens when he didn't tell his boss what he was up to. She'd have to dream up a new and creative way to make sure that he never EVER left her out of the loop again. They were a TEAM, after all - he needed to remember that.   
  
"And I did do the research on owls and dream imagery you asked me to." Sydney was saying.   
  
Jarod's voice on the other end of the line was immediately curious. "What did you find out?"  
  
"Overall, the owl has a very contradictory meaning, both in folklore as well as in dreams. On the one hand, the owl symbolizes wisdom, and yet on the other, death. From what I've been able to gather, however, hearing an owl hoot in your dreams warns the dreamer of disappointment - or of death creeping in closely behind joy and health." Sydney paused to let Jarod process the information. "That's about all I could discover."  
  
That did it. Talking about omens and harbingers of death was just a little too far out for even her. Miss Parker began to cackle derisively as she came around the corner of the office door as if just arriving and only hearing the end of his last statement. "As if any of that hooey held any water. Hell, I had an owl dive-bomb me just the other day, and you don't see me running to a psychic - or a psychiatrist - to have him read my fortune..." She waved her finger at the phone. "Who is that?"  
  
Sydney glared at her in startled surprise. "Excuse me? This is a private conversation..."  
  
She stepped closer. "Who are you talking to, Sydney?"  
  
They stared at each other for a moment before he finally dropped his gaze. "Jarod."  
  
"Put him on the speaker." When he looked up again defiantly and just continued staring at him, she pointed again. "Now, Syd."   
  
The psychiatrist stabbed at the button in frustration and then hung up the receiver. "It seems we have company," he announced unhappily.  
  
"This is the Centre," she announced very carefully, jabbing a finger into his shoulder painfully to make her point. "When you talk on the phone here, you do so on company time - which means the company has the right to listen in. There IS no expectation of privacy here, and you know it."  
  
"Miss Parker." Jarod's voice took on that smooth arrogance with which he normally talked to her. "What are you doing down in the Sim Lab, slumming?"  
  
"Figure it out, genius - I work here, and Doctor Dolittle here works for me." She didn't need to look down to know that Sydney was fuming. Good! So was she. "As for slumming, we won't mention you two talking about superstitious clap-trap, will we? What's the matter, Jarod - did the plug come out and leak all the dirty water out of your Magic Eight Ball again?"  
  
"Anything that just doesn't fit into your nice, tidy, Centre-oriented view of the world is worthless, is that it, Miss Parker?" Jarod sneered back, stung. "Well, thanks for the info, Sydney. Enjoy your symposium." The click on the other end of the line was audible.  
  
"For God's sake, Parker, must you always..." Sydney began chiding her in earnest as he set the receiver back on the hook.  
  
She had a warning finger out immediately and was shaking it in his face. "Don't you dare scold me, Sydney. You knew you were going to be taking off days ago - and you kept me in the dark about it... So spill - just when did you plan on taking off?"  
  
"This weekend, as a matter of fact. I leave the day after tomorrow."  
  
Finely arched eyebrows soared in surprise and consternation. "What is this, Vacation Weekend for the Centre Elite? First Lyle takes off for the rest of the week after dumping his load on me, and now YOU tell me YOU'RE off to..."  
  
"And your problem with that is...?" He glared at Miss Parker and let his voice carry his frustration with the grilling she was giving him. "Just how long has it been now since I've had any time off at all?"  
  
"Down boy," Miss Parker glared back at him. "Just when did you intend to tell me you were going to be incommunicado for half a whole week?" she snarled with her hand on her hip.  
  
"Later today," Sydney answered her, his voice no less angry. "I fail to see what is making you so angry about this. I didn't tell you earlier so that I wouldn't have to put up with your temper any longer than necessary," he added bluntly and sourly. "I have enough to do that I could do WITHOUT the attitude for as long as possible."  
  
That stung too. "You'd get a helluva lot less attitude if you'd just TELL me these things..."  
  
"I'd be a helluva more than willing to tell you these things if I didn't have to dread the inevitable reaction. Just for once, Parker, couldn't you be happy for me?" Sydney complained bitterly, facing her directly for a long moment before reaching for his briefcase. "Why is it that my accomplishments only serve to make you angry?" he asked rhetorically as he opened the case and began to quickly move his papers into it.  
  
Miss Parker opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again when she realized that her old friend had a valid point. "What about if we get a lead on Jarod?" she asked petulantly instead.  
  
Sydney glowered at her, then relented. "I'll have my cell phone," he reminded her in a tired voice. "If need be, I can always cut my time short and leave right after my speech."   
  
They stared at each other for a long moment. "Congratulations, Syd," she said finally. "I'm really happy for you."  
  
"Thank you," he answered a little less defensively, recognizing the concession that he'd just won. He sighed at last. "I'm assuming that your being here originally had some other purpose than just hanging around my office to eavesdrop on my phone calls. If not, I should point out that phone taps are by far a more efficient..."  
  
"Shut up," she snapped, not in the mood. "Do you remember that report on timeframes that I had you do a couple of weeks ago?"   
  
"Yes," he answered warily.  
  
"Well, Raines wants it redone, figuring in the amount of time since we last heard from Wonder-Boy. Not counting just now." She watched him narrow his eyes in frustration, and she glared back defensively. "Look. Don't blame me! The Wheezing Geezer has got it in his head that there's some hidden meaning in the scheduling of Jarod's pretends as contrasted to when he hands over clues to what he's up to."  
  
Sydney's next sigh was profound. "Oh, very well. I'll work on recalibrating my statistics on the way to California so you can have my timeframes report hopefully next Monday. Will that satisfy everyone?"  
  
She nodded, realizing that this was about as close to cooperation as she was going to get from him now. "It'll have to do, I suppose." She then turned to leave the office, brushing against Broots roughly in the process. The balding technician turned and watched her stalk from the Sim Lab before turning back to Sydney. "What's with her?"  
  
"I didn't tell her that I was leaving to give a speech at a symposium as soon as she would want me to..." the psychiatrist answered dully.  
  
"You're getting published, and now you're off to give a speech too?" Broots' grin of happiness was wide. "Sydney! Are you even going to speak to us mere mortals once you are a psychiatric celebrity?"  
  
Sydney blinked and then chuckled at his friend's gentle humor. The simple compliment had gone far to repair the mood Miss Parker had so blithely destroyed. "I'll always have time for YOU, mon ami - always!"  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	3. Playing the Game to Win

Playing the Game to Win  
  
Jun 24  
  
Santa Luisita ~ Mission Plaza  
  
Lyle looked around him contentedly. This was perfect! He couldn't have timed the beginning of his Hunt any better had he known that Lori Cheung would be speaking at a Santa Luisita Mission Art Council Exposition beforehand. As it was, this would give him an opportunity to let the local media become unknowingly complicit in setting the trap for Sydney - and ultimately for Jarod.   
  
Already the usual parade of tourists flowing through the pedestrian mall in front of the old Mission building had begun to grow in anticipation of the afternoon of speeches and demonstrations. Lyle found himself gravitating toward the gift shop to the left of the front door of the ancient church, where he could wait out the few minutes until the event got completely underway without calling attention to himself. Besides, the day was genuinely warm, and the thick, adobe walls of the old church kept the gift shop cool within. He gave a bored and cursory look to the merchandise being sold - rosaries, the inevitable plaque with those famous praying hands, crosses and crucifixes in all styles and sizes - and thanked his lucky stars that he'd never been burdened by religion.  
  
The local media was already gathering. A television camera crew had set up their tripods not far from the fountains, and several newspaper reporters and photographers had joined them as the opening speech grew imminent. A podium had appeared on the bottom steps of the Mission from somewhere, and as he leaned nonchalantly against one of the thick adobe walls, he could see Lori Cheung standing off to the side of the group reading through her notes and practicing her speech.  
  
God, but she was even more beautiful in person than she had been in the pictures he'd seen. Her blue-black hair hung straight down her back past her waist, and she would occasionally toss back a wayward ebony rope that would mischievously find its way around her shoulder to hang down the front of her stark white tee shirt like a snake. Her hands were small but expressive, moving gracefully in punctuation to the words that she was practicing. She was a slim and tiny little thing, but she was a dynamo who moved with the grace of a dancer. Lyle could feel his heart beginning to pound just a little bit faster just at the thought of such a woman being his - his in all the ways that were TRULY important to the Hunt, that is...  
  
Then it was time. Lyle moved from his spot in the shade and inconspicuous background to find a place among the hangers-on that stood behind the podium. Lori began to give her speech, which Lyle ignored entirely in favor of making sure that his face was in the background but close enough that he'd show up in every shot taken by the newspaper photographers. Then, as she reached the emotional high point of her speech - the part that the television cameras had probably been called to cover - he began to keep his eyes firmly glued to her. After all, he couldn't be sure which media would reach which man first - either way, he had to call attention to himself with people for whom his mere presence in the shot would be a warning flag.  
  
Then the speech was over, and Lori was being pressed on all sides by well wishers and fans. Lyle lost sight of her briefly when he simply was pushed out of the way but then caught up to her almost unexpectedly when the crowd thinned and left her alone to listen to the next speaker on the roster. She looked almost relieved that her moment of notoriety had passed as she was retrieving her shoulder bag from an organizer and looking for a thin spot in the crowd to make her get-away.  
  
"I enjoyed your speech," Lyle said in a friendly tone, moving closer to her.  
  
She looked up into his face, finding it bland and friendly, and smiled in that patient "OK, I suppose I can talk to you for a moment" expression that compliant celebrities so often get when in the midst of fans. "Thanks."  
  
"No, really," Lyle pressed. "I was just thinking that this might just be one of the better venues for my corporation to help out. I'd hate to see the Children's Art Center have to close after all the hard work you've put in."  
  
Her eyes went from bored to sparkling - the man sounded like just the kind of person that she'd been trying to attract to her project all along. "And just what corporation are you with, Mr...?"  
  
"Lyle," he said kindly, putting out a hand for her to shake. "I work for an organization known as The Centre - and we've never been able to find a suitable charity to work with in this part of the country. I'd like to think that I've found something to remedy that situation with."  
  
"Mr. Lyle?" she repeated, and he nodded. She sighed happily. "Well, if I can convince your organization to get behind the children of this county, I can guarantee you plenty of positive press."  
  
Lyle smiled and slipped his hand very gently around her elbow. "How would you like to discuss this over lunch - my treat?"  
  
Lori looked over her shoulder, and Lyle felt a quick breath of panic wash over him. "Well, I told my sister-in-law that I was going to meet her over at 1865 for lunch, but..." She looked at him as if taking his measure. "How long are you in Santa Luisita?"  
  
Lyle shook his head in mock defeat. "I have to be on my way back to LA tonight, and from there back to Delaware, where we're headquartered." He put on a long face - all the better to tug at vulnerable heartstrings. "That's too bad, I was kind of hoping..."  
  
"Hang on." Lori pulled a tiny silver cell phone from her purse and punched a couple of buttons. "Sandy? Me. Listen, I've got a potential corporate sponsor standing here wanting to buy me lunch and discuss helping out sponsor the Children's Art Gal..." She listened for a moment. "Yeah - that sounds better. I'll meet you at the gallery at about... three?"   
  
She looked to Lyle for confirmation, and he nodded innocently and willingly. Like Hell she'd make any three o'clock appointment, he thought - and what better way to get things rolling in the media than to have her miss an appointment with a family member so soon after being visibly in his company!   
  
"Fine, then, I'll see you there." She disconnected the call and put the phone away. "Well, Mr. Lyle, I'm all yours for lunch," she smiled up at him with her straight, white teeth, long and luxurious black hair and creamy golden skin.  
  
"Wonderful!" he grinned down at her, making his blue-grey eyes as innocently pleased as he possibly could under the circumstances. She wouldn't know - until far too late, if things worked out properly - just how true the words she'd just spoken would be. In the meanwhile, his hold on her elbow grew just a little bit more possessive as he guided her through the crowd and toward his sports car.   
  
His heart picked up its rhythm by just a little bit more. The opening moves of The Hunt sometimes were just TOO easy!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ The Centre: SL - 4 (Computer Lab)  
  
Angelo peeked through the grating of the ventilation duct at the far end of the room and studied the blinking light of the surveillance camera, still recording room activity while the lights were low and nobody was technically in the area. Soon enough, as planned, the little red light blinked twice and then extinguished, signaling the program he'd written and embedded deeply within the Centre mainframe years ago had responded to a set of directives typed in hours ago from a completely different location. The spry little man pushed through the grate and dropped silently to the floor, a couple of pieces of white paper held in his mouth to free his hands.  
  
Moving to the nearest terminal, Angelo pressed the button that connected it to the Centre mainframe - that mammoth and labyrinthine computer entity in which all the secrets of the Centre Universe were stored, somewhere, somehow. A few more keystrokes and the scanner next to the computer initialized, after which Angelo place the first of the two sheets in it and read it into the email he'd created. In another minute, both pages had been copied and were already on their way to their destination.  
  
Angelo quickly shut down the terminal and turned it off, ran both sheets of paper through the shredder, and pulled the grating to the vent open again. He pulled the grate closed again and headed off down the vent to one of his secret places - places where he felt the safest.  
  
Two minutes later, the little red light on the camera blinked on.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
St. Paul, Minnesota ~ Warehouse District  
  
In the corner, near the heavy steel door that gave entry to the lair that had been Jarod's home for the past three weeks, was the only pool of light. It didn't illuminate much of the vast and empty space - just enough so that when Jarod came through the door, he could see to find the light switch that would light up the corner that was his current apartment arrangement.   
  
In the darkness of that sparsely furnished space, a tiny green light that was the power indicator of the powerful laptop glowed steadily. The silence of the vast room was scratched slightly as the hard drive within the apparatus worked for a little while, and then a voice announced to the empty room, "You have mail!"  
  
Then the laptop sat with its little green light glowing steadily, waiting patiently for its owner to come back from his latest long walk in the dead of night to avoid the dreams of owls and impending doom.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
June 26  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Washington Street  
  
"This is Sydney."  
  
"Syd." Miss Parker knew she need do very little else to tell the person on the other end of the line who was calling. "What time is your flight?"  
  
Sydney sighed. She had avoided him for the last two days, evidently pushed out of shape by the fact that he hadn't told her of his plans for California before Jarod had spilled the beans. Not that there had been much of a reason for her to come looking for him anyway - Jarod was still keeping a low profile and leaving no leads whatsoever for any of them to follow. That would change sometime next week, he imagined... "Parker..."  
  
"What time's your flight, Freud?"  
  
"Ten o'clock out of Dover," he replied in a frustrated tone. He knew better than to try to keep the information from her - once she decided on a line of investigation, her focus was intense. "I didn't expect a bon voyage call from you, of all people..."  
  
"It isn't. I have to drive into Dover myself this morning," she told him in a no-nonsense tone, "on business - I was thinking that if our times fit, I could save you the cab fare."  
  
Shaggy greying eyebrows rose in surprise. "That's very kind of you, Miss Parker, but I don't want to put you to any trouble..."  
  
"No trouble at all. So, if I'm going to get you to the airport on time to go through security, I suppose I'd better get moving..."  
  
"Are you sure?" God knows he appreciated the lift, but the trade-off of riding for a half-hour with a pissed Miss Parker driving like a bat out of Hell wasn't his idea of a good thing.  
  
"Are you packed?" was the response.  
  
"As a matter of fact..."  
  
"Then I'll be there in about five minutes." The line went dead in his ear.  
  
Sydney shook his head and replaced the handset in the base. One of these days he'd have to talk to her about her lack of telephone etiquette - probably on a day when she was feeling particularly out of sorts anyway so that a bit of unsolicited paternal scolding wouldn't ruin anything not already damaged. Still, he was intrigued that she had evidently decided to mend fences over this latest ado with that kind of peace offering. He patted his jacket pocket - the cell phone situated therein tapped against the hard lump that was his key ring in his trousers pocket. In his vest, he could feel the round shape of the watch Michelle had given him years ago.   
  
With a look around the house to make sure nothing was out of place, he put the beret that he always wore when travelling on his head, grabbed up his suitcase and then draped the garment bag with his tux over that arm. He walked out the front door of his house and pulled the door carefully closed after him, then locked it with both key and alarm system. Feeling like he didn't want to put Miss Parker out any further than she already was, he stepped way from the house and down to the driveway she would pull into.  
  
A white blur swooped down from out of the tall pine trees, and a white feather drifted down through the air to land in his startled hand. The owl let loose a single, haunting "Hoo!" as it flew off over down the quiet street and vanished behind the leaves of the elm tree across the way.   
  
Sydney stared after the owl for a long moment, then studied the perfect white feather that had evidently been the bird's gift to him. He frowned, for amid that white perfection was a spattering of what could only be blood - small, symmetrically circular and so precisely placed in the center of the feather that, if he hadn't known better, he could have sworn that human hand had painted the crimson droplet in place. What was it with owls lately, he asked himself, then tucked the feather away in his vest pocket as Miss Parker's sleek, black Boxster purred around the same corner where the owl had vanished.  
  
Miss Parker pulled her car into the driveway and had the trunk lid popped almost before the vehicle had come to a complete halt. Sydney deposited the suitcase carefully, then closed the lid and opened the back passenger door to hang the garment bag on the hook before sliding into the passenger seat beside her. She looked over at him from behind her dark sunglasses. "All set?"  
  
"Whenever you are," he replied, sliding the seatbelt across his lap and chest and snapping it firmly in place. He'd ridden with her often enough to know to put the harness on immediately.  
  
"Hi-ho Silver," she quipped dryly, putting the car in reverse and backing carefully down the drive to head back the way she had come. "Dover Airport, here we come."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Dover, Delaware ~ Dover Airport Tarmac  
  
The conversation in the car had died the moment Miss Parker had started to navigate the General Aviation side of the airport, heading toward the small hangar on the edge of the airfield that the Centre called its own. The Boxster pulled to a halt not far away from where the sleek, black Centre jet sat waiting for its cross-continental passenger. "So I'll see you on Monday then," she said as she put the vehicle in park and turned off the engine.  
  
"Just so you know and don't get upset, I'm not going to turn my cell phone back on until AFTER my speech," Sydney told her finally - this one little piece of personal rebellion being something he didn't really want to let her see until their time together was almost through. "Knowing Mr. Raines and his real reluctance to give me permission for the time for this trip in the first place, I figure that it would just like him to manufacture a reason to call me back before then - and I won't have it."  
  
"Wait a minute, Freud," Miss Parker put a hand on his upper arm to prevent him from sliding out of the car. "How the Hell am I going to get a hold of you in case of a REAL breadcrumb?"  
  
"Be reasonable, Parker," he sighed, frustrated that he had to rationalize his actions to her, of all people. "By the time we get one of his breadcrumbs lately, Jarod has already been long gone. You know it, and I know it - the only people who don't seem to get it are Raines and Lyle. A few hours one way or the other for our coming along behind is simply not going to make that much difference..." With that, he pushed the car door open and escaped her grasp.  
  
"I don't like it that you're going to be completely out of touch," she insisted, climbing from behind the steering wheel spurred on by a vague feeling of alarm. "We're a team..."  
  
"I'm not going to be COMPLETELY out of touch, Parker," he reminded her with the garment bag already draped over an arm, closing the back passenger door. "You can always call the hotel..."  
  
"Which hotel? You haven't told me where you're going to be," she interrupted with a glare. "You've actually been amazingly closed-mouthed about this whole thing."  
  
"Embassy Suites is the hotel in Santa Luisita where the symposium is being held," he told her, reaching into the trunk for his suitcase. "But you're not going to need to call me, and you know it." He straightened and let his expression become imploring. "Please, Parker. Give me just a little space for a change - forty-eight hours without a Centre leash. That's all I ask."  
  
The small voices at the back of her mind were becoming even more restless than they had been when he'd announced he was leaving his cell phone off, and her response to their increased volume was to become defensively sharp with him. "Fine. Go on, then. See you on Monday, bright and early."  
  
Greying eyebrows pulled together unhappily over his chestnut eyes; but with Miss Parker in this kind of mood, he knew there would be no approaching her. He sighed again. "Have a good weekend, Miss Parker." He turned away to walk toward the jet.  
  
The sight of his broad back turned to her as he walked away kicked the voices in the back of her mind from a subtle whisper into a cacophony. Daddy had looked something like that in the moment before he'd plunged out the open cargo door of the jet over the stormy, nighttime Atlantic. Tommy had looked something like that to her sleepy eyes as he had gotten up to start the coffee and take a shower the morning she'd found him murdered on the porch. Even her last memory of her mother was of Catherine walking away to get in the elevator after giving her the gift that had lain unopened in her closet for years. When people walked away like that, they had this ugly habit of never coming back...  
  
"Sydney, wait!"  
  
The odd tone of her call halted the Belgian in his tracks, and he turned just in time to see her break into a trot to catch up with him. The moment she was close enough, she had her arms up and around his neck. Stunned, Sydney dropped his suitcase to the ground so that he had his arms relatively free as he bent and caught her to him. He held her silently for a moment, and then in a softer voice asked into the hair by her ear, "Hey! What's this?"  
  
"Don't ask me to explain it," she began, hanging onto him tightly, "but I have the most awful feeling... Don't go, Sydney. Please!"  
  
"Hush." His arms tightened about her comfortingly for a moment, and then he was setting her away just a little so that he could look into her face with a hand cupped gently about a cheek. "This is just a weekend jaunt, Parker. Nothing's going to happen to me."  
  
"But..."  
  
She genuinely was fearful for him, and he was touched beyond measure that she was actually letting this sudden vulnerability show. "I'll call you when I get to my hotel room and give you the number there, so that you know I got there safely. Will that help?"  
  
The storm-grey of her eyes showed her disappointment, and she slowly pulled her arms from around his neck so that her hands just rested gently against his chest, where she toyed with the lapels of his sports jacket. "I can't convince you to just... NOT..."  
  
He could see that she wasn't doing this just on a whim - something had her spooked, and badly. Still... "I need to do this, Parker. This is the kind of recognition every researcher hopes will come their way just once in a lifetime." He pulled her head forward so that he could drop a gentle kiss on her forehead. "I'll call when I get to my room, and I WILL see you again on Monday morning. My cell phone will be on from Saturday evening on, so you can call me if you need to talk." He swept her hair back from her face. "And when I get back, we WILL talk about this - I promise." He gazed into her face with more fondness in his expression than he'd allowed himself to show her for decades and allowed a thumb to gently outline a cheekbone. "It will be all right, ma petite. Don't worry so."  
  
Her face lost what little color it had had left. He was going, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. "Be careful, Sydney - I l..." No, she caught herself before she could show him the depths of her vulnerability. "I'll miss you," she said instead softly, withdrawing and beginning to feel embarrassed by her emotional display.  
  
He let her withdraw to a safe distance as her habitual defenses stubbornly insisted on reasserting themselves, then bent to retrieve his suitcase from where it had landed on the asphalt. "I promise I'll call you when I get in. I'll probably have left a message on your machine by the time you get home."  
  
She backed away from him a few steps and wrapped her arms around herself as if chilled. "Goodbye, Syd."  
  
"See you later, Parker. Have a good weekend."  
  
And with that, he again turned and headed for the jet. Miss Parker stood and watched then as the sweeper assigned to the jet as steward for the flight raised the steps just before the jet engines wound themselves up more tightly and the sleek black jet began to move. She stood with arms folded tightly around herself as the little jet taxied to the end of the runway and then made its run into the air  
  
When she turned back to her car and her errand, she felt as if a very important part of her world had dropped unexpectedly away - and she didn't like that hollow feeling one bit. The voices in the back of her mind had dropped back to a mournful whimper of loss - and to have that feeling be about Sydney, of all people, was disturbing.  
  
This was going to be a VERY long weekend.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
St. Paul, Minnesota ~ Warehouse District  
  
"Damn it, Sydney, pick up!" Jarod snapped, listening to the ringing of Sydney's cell phone. After two more rings, he muttered a slightly more colorful curse that he'd learned on a Pretend as a longshoreman not that long ago and punched a button to end that call and then punched in another number and waited. He sighed deeply when he finally did hear his mentor's voice - this time a recorded message:  
  
"This is Sydney. I am away from the phone right now, so if you would please leave a message..."  
  
"SHIT!" The Pretender disconnected and dropped his hand to the table next to the laptop. There, on the screen, was the email that Angelo had sent him - with the documents that had him scrambling to reach Sydney as quickly as possible. Jarod read the two-page memo one more time, as if having a hard time believing the Centre to be so paranoid that it would genuinely consider having poison-containing capsules implanted in its top-level personnel. Even Mr. Raines had one - courtesy of Mr. Parker and his need to control his people - and probably didn't know about it anymore than any of the rest of them did. The memo was from Mr. Parker to the Triumvirate, announcing completion of the implantation process and listing the people involved:  
  
Lyle   
  
Raines   
  
Cox   
  
White   
  
Miss Parker   
  
Broots   
  
Sydney  
  
Angelo  
  
Even Brigitte had had one too.   
  
The list continued for twenty-eight names, all of them people at the pinnacle of the power structure of the part of the Centre they worked at or with close personal ties to others in such a position. The memo didn't detail how the implants had been put in place, only that the task was completed. It then listed the combination of chemicals that would trigger the disintegration of the implant to release the poison if the need for such action were deemed necessary.  
  
Miss Parker. Broots. Sydney.  
  
These were names he didn't want to see on a list like this - and he picked up his cell phone and pushed another programmed number. He then sat there while the phone rang the requisite four times before: "I'm assuming you know whom you're calling, or you wouldn't still be listening to a stupid machine. Leave a message - you know the routine," Miss Parker's voice announced in a dry and mocking tone.  
  
He decided to take a chance that the Centre wasn't currently monitoring her incoming calls at home. "Parker, it's Jarod. I need to talk to you - and to Sydney and Broots too. I'll try to call back later. It's urgent - and this is no game. Don't go back into work, whatever you do." He hung up, then dialed another number from memory.  
  
"This is Broots... uh... the Computer Lab..."  
  
"Mr. Broots - thank God!"  
  
"Ja... My God!" He heard a scooting noise, and then Broots answered him, obviously lowering his voice so as not to be overheard. "What the heck are you calling me HERE for?"  
  
"Believe me, if it weren't important, I wouldn't be calling you there, Mr. Broots. Where are Sydney and Miss Parker?"  
  
Broots scratched his head. The Pretender they had spent over five years chasing was asking HIM where the other members of his search team had gone? Surprise made him honest. "Miss Parker has gone in to get some documents from the Dover office - and Sydney's gone for his vacation in California..."  
  
"Listen to me," Jarod said intensely. "Start sneezing, start complaining of a headache, ANYTHING, but get yourself out of the Centre now and into the office of a doctor that has nothing to do with the Centre. Tell them..."  
  
"What do you mean, get myself..."  
  
"Shut up, Mr. Broots, and listen. Have the doctor do an x-ray of your gastrointestinal tract, and be prepared to have surgery to remove anything he finds there."  
  
Jarod closed his eyes as the sinister beauty of the failsafe plan came clear to him as he talked to the computer wizard on Miss Parker's payroll. All it would take would be a pellet into the Computer Lab's coffee pot - the addition of a compound that would be utterly harmless to anybody else who worked there but deadly for a decent man with a young daughter who depended upon him!  
  
He was a decent man who was also being frustratingly obtuse for a Friday morning. "What the Hell..."  
  
"Just do it, Mr. Broots. Your life depends on it. Literally." That stunned the Centre employee into silence. "And tell Miss Parker to check her messages and expect my call."  
  
"Y...you're sure?" Broots' voice was soft and definitely shaken now.  
  
Jarod started typing, forwarding the email that he'd gotten from Angelo after carefully deleting all the header information that would tell where the original had come from to anybody who knew how to read the information properly. There was no need to give the search team any more information than it absolutely needed right now. "Turn on your email client," the Pretender directly curtly. "Print a copy of what I'm sending you so you can show it to Miss Parker, then make sure the incoming email is completely deleted from the mainframe." He hit the Send button. "But I suggest you read this someplace private - like at home, in the bathroom, in case you have to throw up after reading it."  
  
"Geez!"  
  
Jarod could hear the computer terminal in the distance on the other end of the line sing out in that bland woman's voice, "You've got mail!" He closed his eyes. That was maybe one good person's life saved. "Go now, Broots. Get the Hell outta there."  
  
"Shit!" He was sure the technician's expletive had slipped out unnoticed and sighed. Broots must have scanned the memo superficially and now knew the urgency Jarod had felt. "What about Miss Parker and Sydney?"  
  
"You talk to Miss Parker as soon as you can. I'll take care of Sydney."  
  
Broots' voice was hesitant. "I... uh... don't know what to say..."  
  
"Consider it a gift to your daughter," Jarod said with a sad smile. "Take care of yourself, Mr. Broots." He closed the connection and then opened up the browser on the laptop. In a few keystrokes he had booked himself passage on the next flight to California and paid for it using Centre funds Lyle had squirreled away in a secret account. Pleased at the ease of putting these new plans into effect, he shut the laptop down and disconnected it.   
  
He looked around the mostly empty warehouse loft. Other than the laptop case at the end of the table, a sofa on which a duffelbag had served as a pillow, a television/VCR on the floor near the sofa and a coffee table stacked high with books on the American underworld, there really wasn't much to leave behind. He reached into the laptop case and pulled out the red notebook that held clippings and notes from this latest Pretend - everything up to and including the suicides that had been the unhappy punctuation that ended the entire process - and left it on the table in plain sight. Whoever came after him would find it - it was a trademark, after all - but they would find little else here to tell them where he'd gone next.  
  
He'd call Miss Parker again later. But for now, he needed to get going to get to Sydney before anybody else did...  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Dover, Delaware ~ Urgent Care Medical Group  
  
The doctor came back into the examination room, and Broots' heart sank. The physician had a genuinely confused look on his face. "For a moment there, I was wondering if you were just dreaming, Mr. Broots," Doctor Weiss said as he turned on the x-ray viewer. "Then I saw this." He snapped the x-ray he'd just taken of Broots' stomach into place and pointed.  
  
There it was - and Broots thought for a moment that he was going to lose both his breakfast and that cola he'd had on the drive up here. Small and lodged into the lining of his stomach was a capsule-shaped object. "What is it?" he asked in a very small voice.  
  
"I'm not exactly sure," Weiss shook his head, "anymore than I'm sure what it's made of."  
  
"I want it GONE!" Broots' voice was raised and almost panic-stricken. "NOW!"  
  
"Calm yourself, Mr. Broots. I can make an appointment for outpatient surgery for you in the morning..."  
  
Broots put his hand over his abdomen and tried not to think about what his body had been carrying around inside it. "As long as I get rid of it," he said vehemently.   
  
Weiss nodded his head and began writing. He supposed that if he'd just found out that he had something that strange and unidentified inside HIS body, he'd be upset as well. "I want you to take this prescription and have it filled and take one pill this afternoon and one this evening. That will neutralize any excess acidity in your stomach caused by stress that might damage this... whatever it is. No food by mouth after midnight..."  
  
Broots nodded while listening to the instructions with only a fraction of his attention. The Centre had done this to him - made him a walking time bomb! And not only him, but Miss Parker and Sydney too! What kind of place would do such a thing - and what did it say about HIM that he worked for that place?   
  
Maybe it was time to re-assess whether his paycheck - generous for one of his position - was worth the risk any longer?  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites - Front Lobby  
  
"Sydney!"  
  
Sydney turned away from the registration desk, keycard envelope in hand, to see Phillip Warner walking across the posh lobby tucking a newspaper under his arm. "Phillip!" he called back, tucking the keycard envelope into the breast pocket of his jacket and then thrusting out his hand in welcome. "It's been a long time!"  
  
"Yes, it has. Let me look at you." Sydney returned the favor, finding his friend several years older than he'd been the last time he saw him, but still in fine shape otherwise. The hair on the top of the man's head was sparser - but no more so than his own. "Do I remember properly, or is my mind playing tricks with me in telling me that you're one of the major organizers of this?"  
  
Warner's dark eyes were dancing. "No, your mind is a sharp as ever. As a matter of fact, I've been hanging around the lobby here hoping I'd be able to catch you before you went up. There's been a slight change of scheduling for the speeches tomorrow." He looked and saw that Sydney was still carrying his luggage. "Why don't you go get yourself settled in and changed, and then meet me in the lounge in about an hour? We can head over to the banquet dinner from there."  
  
"That sounds like an excellent idea." Sydney smiled. "I'll see you in an hour." He shook hands again and, after looking around to locate the bank of elevators, headed off.  
  
Warner's smile of welcome faded, and his dark eyes sought out the crystal blue-greys that had been watching his every move. The face behind those eyes showed dismay and pique. The subtle approach hadn't been good enough - the fact that Lyle's face was clearly visible on the front of the newspaper which Warner had carefully folded to show the picture of the missing Cheung woman had been missed entirely by the travel-worn Centre psychiatrist.   
  
Warner found reason to move in Lyle's direction. "He didn't see it," the psychiatrist said, explaining the obvious.  
  
"No shit," Lyle spat. "Make SURE he sees it while you two are having drinks tonight. My timeframe on this is very tight - I need him aware that I'm in the area tonight before the dinner."  
  
"Yes, sir," Warner nodded vigorously. "You can count on me."  
  
"Be sure that I can," Lyle hissed, pulling the man's arm so that he was hissing almost directly into his ear. "We wouldn't want any word of that cute little insurance agent's suicide to leak out, now, would we?"  
  
Warner's gaze became an uncomfortable mixture of nervous and furious. "There was nothing..."  
  
"C'mon, Doc. You know and I know you were getting a little on the side while helping her with her depression. But how were you to know that she would suddenly turn suicidal when you made her pregnant.?" Lyle's predatory smile was triumphant. It had been convenient that the Triumvirate had been willing to give him dirt to use to motivate some of the attendees to this soiree into helping him bait his trap. It was even more satisfying to see that fury in the older man's eyes grow hotter even as the realization of its impotence grew. "Just make sure Sydney sees that damned picture."  
  
"I told you I'd do it," Warner hissed back, pulling his arm free. He straightened his tie nervously and stalked away from Lyle fuming.   
  
Lyle looked around to make sure no note had been taken of their quiet altercation before heading for the parking lot. He had some free time now before having to be present to snap the trapdoor shut on Sydney - and he had just the place to go and person with whom to spend that time.  
  
She should be waking up again just about now, he smiled to himself coldly. Time to have some fun.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Miss Parker's home  
  
"I'm assuming you know whom you're calling, or you wouldn't still be listening to a stupid machine. Leave a message - you know the routine." BEEP  
  
"Parker, it's Sydney - and I'm calling to tell you I made it here safely, as I promised. I'm at the Embassy Suites, room 407. The number here is 805-54..." Sydney rattled off the phone number from the telephone sitting on the nightstand in front of him. "I'll be out most of the evening, and I'll have my cell phone off most of tomorrow. Leave a message if you need to talk, and I'll call you back."  
  
Sydney hung up the phone and moved to the closet where he'd hung the garment bag. Maybe he could take a quick shower before climbing into that monkey suit for the banquet. Why did they have to make those things black tie and tux all the time?  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Denver, Colorado ~ Mile-High Airport  
  
Jarod was fit to be tied. He was inside the airport terminal, looking out across the runway system upon which nothing was moving whatsoever, thanks to the violent storm that had moved directly overhead. Just landing at Denver, where he would catch a connecting flight to Phoenix and from there directly into Santa Luisita, had been a chancy proposition. The passenger jet had weathered some rough weather in making their final approach, and the storm had broken over them not long after they'd made it to the ground. As he'd rushed to get to the gate of his connecting flight, he heard some of the others in the terminal chattering excitedly about the funnel cloud that had been sighted crossing the runways.  
  
And now the voice on the terminal-wide intercom had just announced there would be no further flights into or out of Denver until the weather cleared substantially - which might take until after midnight. There was little he could do now but wait.  
  
No, that wasn't right. He had at least one phone call left to make. She should be home by now, he figured. He twisted his wrist to check the time, then pulled out his cell phone and punched the number at the top of his programmed list.   
  
"What?" She didn't sound quite as angry - maybe because for a change he hadn't called her so late that he'd awakened her out of a sound sleep.  
  
"I want you to take a drive tomorrow - get as far away from Blue Cove and the Centre as you can, and then..."  
  
"What the Hell is this all about, Jarod?" she demanded harshly. "You leave a doom and gloom message on my machine and then have the unmitigated balls not to call back until just NOW?"  
  
"Parker, you're right, I'm sorry - now will you shut up and listen?"  
  
"...And Broots - I find out when I get back to the office that he got a mysterious call too - and then left work early. And when I called Debbie to find out how he was, I find out he's scheduled for laproscopic abdominal surgery in Dover tomorrow morning? What is going on?"  
  
Jarod walked over to lean a tired forehead against the warm glass of the terminal window. "Are you through?"  
  
"Talk to me, Jarod." Her voice was low, threatening - worried.  
  
"You need to go see a doctor tomorrow morning - somebody not associated with the Centre at all." He sighed. "I was hoping Broots would find you and give you the information before he took himself out of the picture."  
  
"WHAT information?" she fairly screamed at him.  
  
"You have an implant..." Jarod began to pace back and forth. He knew this was going to sound very far-fetched, and that in her position he would have a hard time believing what he was going to tell her. "Mr. Parker instituted a fail-safe mechanism in all his key personnel and their closest family members in order to assure loyalty and security."  
  
"An implant?"  
  
"Poison, Parker. Encased in a capsule that is impervious to normal digestive juices but, if enhanced by intake of a chemical compound that is otherwise harmless, will dissolve to release a rather nasty poison."  
  
"You're lying."  
  
Jarod sighed. "God, I wish I were, Parker. You have it, Broots has it, Sydney has it - so does Raines, Lyle, Cox, White, and any number of others. Even Brigitte had one."  
  
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. "You have proof?"  
  
"I have a copy of the memo your... Mr. Parker sent to the Triumvirate, telling them that the process was complete."  
  
Another moment of silence. "Damn! And that's why Broots..."  
  
"I called him after I called you."  
  
"What about Sydney?" That whisper of worry that had never left the back of her mind had blossomed into a moan.   
  
"I'm on my way to make sure Sydney gets his taken care of too, Parker. Don't worry."  
  
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," she said in a brittle tone. "Where did you get the information?"  
  
Jarod shook his head and smiled sadly. "I still have contacts within the Centre, you know this..." She was silent for a long moment. "Parker? You still there?"  
  
"Yeah," she answered finally. "Thanks, Jarod. I owe you one."  
  
He disconnected the call and stopped his pacing to lean against the glass once more with eyes closed. That call completed meant there were two decent people safe now.  
  
Feeling slightly better, he decided to head off in the direction of a set of comfortable-looking seats. He reached into his duffelbag and hauled out his computer and activated the wireless modem. He had time on his hands with nothing to do - perhaps he could chase down some information on the West Coast Psychiatric Society while he was waiting. At least he could find out just who it was that had decided to honor Sydney so unexpectedly.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites Hotel - Lounge  
  
"So you mean your boss almost wouldn't let you have the time to..." Warner was incredulous. "Surely he understood..."  
  
"You'd have to know my employer, Phillip," Sydney shook his head in frustration. "He prefers his people plan their vacations years in advance. And my expertise is needed on a sporadic and very random basis, whenever evidence is acquired normally. I'm sure he doesn't want to have to wait for a psychological reading..."  
  
Warner shook his head. "One of these days, you'll have to tell me all about this Centre you work for, Sydney. Right now, however, I'm gonna duck into the back room for a second - and then we can head over to the banquet hall. We don't want to be late for dinner..."  
  
Sydney watched his friend head to the back of the lounge, where the restrooms were located. It had been refreshing to catch up on nearly six years' worth of news from around the psychiatric community, from which he'd been virtually estranged due to the nature of his job. He tossed back the end of his Chivas and put the old fashioned glass back down on the bar next to the newspaper that Phillip had been carrying around with him. Bored while waiting, he opened the folded paper to glance at the front page, and then frowned.  
  
The picture wasn't the sharpest, but even Sydney's tired eyes couldn't help picking Lyle's face out of the crowd behind the pretty oriental woman speaking at some sort of event. Sydney opened the paper further. "Local Activist Missing" was the headline, and his heart did an extra thump. Surely the more sinister Parker twin wouldn't have taken someone to feed his obscene habit whose absence would cause notice?  
  
He read the story, and his suspicion grew. Lori Cheung had vanished not long after this picture had been taken - and her family had reported her disappearance when she missed meeting up with a sister-in-law at the art gallery she had been promoting. Her car had been found still parked in the parking structure not far away, but no signs of her whereabouts had surfaced.   
  
"Are you just about ready to go?" Warner asked, laying down a twenty-dollar bill on the bar to pay for the last round of drinks.  
  
Sydney folded the newspaper and pointed to the picture. "This just caught my eye..."  
  
"Oh yeah, that." Warner sounded bored. "It's been all over the local news - some local artist gal just up and vanishes." He jerked his head. "Let's go - we don't want to be late." With a final suspicious glance at the newspaper, Sydney rose from his stool and followed his friend from the lounge.   
  
In one of the booths along the back wall of the lounge, Lyle's eyes began to glitter. The trap was baited, and the prey was getting curious. Somewhere in the meal he was about to consume would be the substance that would put a very small number to the psychiatrist's remaining days on this earth. All it would take now would be another nudge that couldn't be ignored, and Sydney would be caught. And once he had Sydney, he had the key to Jarod.  
  
He sipped at his Crown Regal patiently. All was going like clockwork. Let the games begin!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Miss Parker's Home  
  
"C'mon, Syd, pick up the phone!" Miss Parker looked at the clock on her kitchen wall and did the math. It was just 7PM on the West Coast yet. Sydney's message had said that he would be out most of the evening. Still, she would have thought...  
  
"This is the Embassy Suites Switchboard. Room 407 is not picking up the line. Would you care to leave a message?" asked the bland voice of the hotel operator.  
  
"Yes. Would you leave an urgent message for him to call Miss Parker at 302..." She rattled off her telephone number. "Tell him to call me back, regardless of the hour."  
  
Miss Parker hung up the telephone, her stomach starting to wind up into a tight knot. Something was wrong - she just KNEW it - and there was NOTHING she could do to stop it.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Denver, Colorado ~ Mile-High Airport Terminal  
  
Jarod re-read the information on his laptop monitor just to make sure that he understood things properly. That was downright odd. The West Coast Psychiatric Society had come into existence in 1965, seemingly out of nowhere, and suddenly begun to hold seminars and symposiums and conferences in smaller, more remote resort venues and drawing the best of the best as their speakers. But from the years 1995 until just the last year, their level of activity had abated to just an annual convention held in San Diego. And suddenly, as of the past January, they were holding monthly symposiums again.  
  
That wasn't like ANY organization Jarod was familiar with. He scrolled down the membership list to see if any names caught his eye - and while there were several that had gained reputation or notoriety for various number of reasons over the years, there was no evidence that this was anything but what it seemed to be: a loose-knit society of clinical psychiatrists.   
  
There was nothing to hang a deeper investigation on, and he sighed in frustration. He reached for the caffeinated cola that he'd purchased hours ago and sipped at it, scowling when he found it both warm and flat. He aimed the can at a nearby trash container and smiled when it sailed in as if pulled on a string. All right, he thought as he shook himself free of his frustrated bemusement, if there wasn't anything to be found in the organization itself, what about the journal that had suddenly decided to publish Sydney's work?  
  
Jarod rubbed under his nose in a gesture that he'd unconsciously learned from his mentor years ago and used whenever bothered by conscience. Sydney, while a truly inspired researcher into the human psyche, had managed to never have any of his works viewed with anything less than skepticism by mainstream psychiatric circles - until now. As much as he'd like to think the others had simply awakened to the near-genius waiting patiently on the sidelines for his talent to be recognized, Jarod's gut instinct told him there simply was more to this story than he'd discovered yet. And the clue he needed to find to bring him to that story had to be out there SOMEWHERE.  
  
Forgive me, Sydney, he thought ruefully, and then typed in the name of the journal into his personal search engine. The screen lit up, and he once more began to read.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites Hotel - Lobby  
  
Sydney waved goodnight to Phillip and another old friend, Craig Fields, and wandered into the lobby intending to head for the elevators and the inviting bed awaiting him upstairs in his room. The keynote speaker for the evening had presented a riveting case study of identical twins suffering from multiple personality disorders that had held him spellbound. He'd almost forgotten for that hour's presentation just how much the tuxedo made him feel like HE was a psychiatric patient tied up and helpless in a straitjacket. Still, the hour was late and he needed to get at least a little sleep so that he'd be fresh in the morning to give his speech.  
  
He was halfway to the elevator when, suddenly, one of the elevator doors slid to the side and Lyle walked out. Sydney's eyes widened, and he stepped aside behind a tall floral arrangement on a side table to avoid being seen. Lyle seemed not to notice anybody around him, and he had that innocently satisfied look that never failed to make Sydney's skin crawl. Lyle was involved in that young woman's disappearance, Sydney was sure of it. But how was he to prove it?   
  
Lyle headed straight for the doors of the hotel and the parking lot beyond. It seemed that he had his fancy sports car parked in a VIP spot, for it didn't take long for him to have the engine started. Not even bothering to think of what he was doing, Sydney waited until Lyle's car was moving slowly through the parking lot in the direction of the exit and then jumped into one of the waiting taxicabs. "Follow that car!" he directed, pointing to the little sports car turning onto the broad street that led to the freeway.  
  
"You're kidding, right?" the cabbie gaped, peering into this rearview mirror at the very formally garbed gentleman with the fancy accent.  
  
Sydney dug in his pocket and dropped a fifty-dollar bill onto the seat next to the driver. "No, I'm not kidding - move it, or you'll lose him!"  
  
"Hang on," the cabbie announced suddenly and pulled away from the curb with enough velocity to press Sydney's back firmly against the cushion of the seat. Keeping a reasonable distance, the cab moved smoothly into the flow of freeway traffic moving southward. Sydney didn't bother to look around him to see just where it was that they were going, he just kept his eyes glued to the twin red taillights that showed where Lyle was. He knew he was working without backup, but he really had no choice. He couldn't call in the authorities until he had something substantial to offer them.  
  
"He's getting off!" He pointed out the obvious, and the cabbie moved the cab back into the slower land and then off the freeway entirely at the first exit into a small beachside community. It took work to stay far enough back not to call notice to themselves without losing sight of the sports car, but the cabbie seemed determined to earn his fifty dollar commission. The cab waited until both occupants could see the taillights of the sports car moving around a corner before the cab turned down the narrow residential street that ended at a barricade. A little ways in the distance, taillights to the sports car could be seen waiting for and then disappearing into a garage on the ocean side of the street.  
  
"Just pull up in front of the garage and let me out," Sydney directed.  
  
"You want me to just leave you out there in the middle of the night?"  
  
"Trust me, I know the fellow we've been following. I won't be alone for long." Sydney patted his pocket to make sure that he still had his cell phone with him. With any luck, somewhere on the property of what was rapidly starting to look like a sizeable estate was the missing oriental woman. Sydney was willing to bet his bottom dollar on it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out yet another twenty. "You did a good job. You deserve this."  
  
"Thanks, Mister," the cabbie grinned. "You sure you don't want me to wait for you?"  
  
Sydney nodded grimly. "I'm sure."  
  
The cabbie turned out the headlights and moved the cab forward a little so that Sydney's door was opening out to the pedestrian gate onto the property. "There you go, then."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
On approach to Los Angeles International Airport ~ United Flight 3752 - First Class section  
  
Jarod peered out the porthole and watched the lights that were Los Angeles draw closer both in geographical distance as well as altitude. His knee, which had started to jump as the stress of needing to get to Sydney NOW had become more acute, was now pumping up and down frantically.  
  
The search on the journal had been far more successful in far quicker order. After following the ownership through any number of shadow corporations, a name had appeared that had struck real fear into his heart: Matumbo. A little more digging had then revealed everything that he'd ever hoped NOT to find out. The journal was nothing but a legitimate front for the Triumvirate, a way to launder yet more of the illicit millions of dollars that the African and European consortium was earning from the sale of blood diamonds.   
  
It was the Triumvirate that had decided to publish Sydney's paper. With that in hand, he'd gone back to investigate several of the members of the West Coast Psychiatric Society, and with not much effort had uncovered where each of them was either employed by other associated corporations under the Triumvirate umbrella or who had done several favors for Triumvirate members for no apparent reason. Sydney had walked into a Triumvirate trap.   
  
But what the hell did they want with him - or what the Hell did they want to happen in Delaware that they wanted Sydney nowhere near?  
  
Santa Luisita was four hours north of Los Angeles by freeway. A rental car was waiting for him at the airport. It was the best that he could do online to expedite his trip - he could only hope that whatever it was that was going to happen would wait until AFTER he got to Sydney.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Central California Coast ~ Outside Triumvirate Safe House  
  
Sydney peered in through the glass window of the strange little sunroom to the side of the house, impressed by the pyramid glass roof the room sported. From the looks of things, the residents of the house were either asleep or... No! He didn't want to think that way. Lyle tended to like to chain up his captives, if the evidence he and Miss Parker and Broots had uncovered over a year ago was any indication. He kept his captives alive for a while before killing them and slicing...  
  
Sydney grimaced and deliberately turned his mind away from what a cannibal would do to a freshly killed body. He HAD to get into this house!  
  
He was about to see whether or not any of the casement windows across the lawn were open at all when the hairs raised on the back of his neck. When Lyle gently brushed the muzzle of his gun against the side of Sydney's neck, the Belgian didn't even flinch. "Hello, Sydney," Lyle said very calmly and conversationally. "The front door's open - and it's so much easier walking into a house through an open door than crawling into one through an open window, don't you agree?"  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	4. Not a Game Anymore

White Owl   
  
by MMB & NIOMR  
  
Not a Game Anymore  
  
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House  
  
Sydney sat with his handcuffed hands behind him tied into immobility in the very comfortable easy chair in front of the massive fireplace. He had been watching Lyle pace back and forth in silence like a caged animal for the past ten minutes. "Is she even still alive?" he asked quietly.  
  
"Who?"  
  
"That young oriental woman you kidnapped the other day," Sydney reminded him with a very calm and peaceful voice so as not to trigger the explosive and unpredictable temper.  
  
Lyle glanced at the psychiatrist briefly and then waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, her? Yeah, she's still alive." The more sinister Parker progeny paused in his pacing and grinned coldly. "For the time being, that is. Now that she's served her purpose, however, I suppose there are better things I could be doing with her..."  
  
Sydney swallowed hard against the bile that rose in the back of his throat at the thought of just what "better things" Lyle might be contemplating. "Served her purpose?" He grabbed onto the one thread of Lyle's statement that offered the least opportunity for distraction. Keeping Lyle talking meant preventing him from doing something else that would be probably far more harmful to someone. "What do you mean, she's served her purpose?"  
  
"She brought you here, didn't she?" Lyle grinned just a little bit wider.   
  
That floored the Belgian. "That was your intent all along?"  
  
The grin turned into a smirk. "Why does it surprise you that I can put together a plan and have it come off like clockwork? Is it because I didn't end up getting thrown into your precious Pretender program, Sydney, is that it?"  
  
"I didn't think that..." The question caught Sydney by surprise.   
  
"Do you honestly think," Lyle's voice turned that horrible calm that almost inevitably prefaced an act of violence or depravity, "if I wanted my part in that woman's disappearance to remain a secret that I would have made such a public spectacle of myself at that rally?"   
  
Sydney merely blinked. He was convinced, now, that his salvation would come from not panicking and using his years of experience as a therapist to perhaps shake Lyle's belief in what he was doing. He'd taught Jarod for years that his mind was his most valuable weapon - it was time to start putting that into practice. "You could have done that for a number of reasons," he replied in as neutral and scientific tones as he could manage. "You could have been taunting the police, much the way arsonists do when they sometimes stand in the crowd of spectators at the sight of their latest fire - thinking 'see how much smarter I am than you? I'm standing here and you idiots don't even know...' Then again, it could have been a call for help - 'stop me please! See me and catch me...'"  
  
"I think I like the first one better," Lyle sniffed, a little uncomfortable with Sydney's so easily picking up on the part of that day that had been the most exhilarating and making it sound so tawdry. He began to pace again. "Then again, you haven't listed the real reason."  
  
"What reason would that be?" Sydney asked in a very leading professional tone.   
  
"That I wanted to catch your attention," the younger man shrugged. "What better way to do so than by committing the one thing that you, thanks to Jarod and his damned research, would quickly attribute to me anyway? By putting my face in the newspaper and on TV, I was inviting you to try to trip me up - only what I really wanted was to get you into this house alone."   
  
"You mean she was nothing but bait for me?" Sydney was nonplussed. That made him at least indirectly responsible... No! He couldn't afford the luxury of guilt yet.  
  
Lyle's smile became genuinely pleased. "Absolutely - and she played her part as bait perfectly, don't you think?"  
  
"For God's sake, Lyle, what's going on here?" Sydney gaped.  
  
The pacing paused. "I hope you enjoyed your meal tonight, because it will be your last," Lyle chortled with real glee. "Already the chemical you ingested is working through your system. You should already have a somewhat upset stomach..."   
  
Sydney's brows furled. He'd laid the blame for the sour stomach on the stress of having gotten himself into such a tight spot, not on... "You mean poison?"  
  
Lyle's answering grin was enough to make the already sour stomach turn over. "By golly, you are smart a little. Twelve hours from now..."  
  
"For God's sake, why?"  
  
The blue-grey eyes that looked altogether too much like his twin sister's were unapologetic and cold. "Nothing personal, Syd. Just orders..."  
  
"Mr. Raines..."  
  
"That half-dead walking bag of wind had nothing to do with this. The orders came from much higher up."  
  
Sydney wilted. If the orders came from the Triumvirate, there was no way he could expect a rescue attempt led by Miss Parker.   
  
Lyle watched the news shred much of the man's damnable composure. "How does it feel," he asked derisively, "to know that you only have a few more hours of increasing agony to live?" Sydney shot his executioner a withering glare and said nothing. The psychiatrist's obstinacy in the face of mortality pricked Lyle's ire. "What's the matter? You think that just because you got the alphabet soup attached to the end of your name, you can ask others intrusive questions about their personal feelings, but they aren't allowed to ask you the same kind of questions?"  
  
"I refuse to answer questions that only have the purpose of promoting your ability to gloat," Sydney snapped back.   
  
"You never have been a very cooperative man," Lyle grumbled, feeling as if he'd been robbed of part of the enjoyment process. "I'm almost glad the Triumvirate decided the time had come for you to be 'removed'... that was how they put it." He resumed his pacing. "My job was to get you away from anybody who would turn your agony into a public spectacle - to bring you here so you could die away from prying eyes."  
  
It was Sydney who sniffed in derision now. "So the Triumvirate has demoted you to Cleaner for the day, eh? Seems THEY don't have much faith in you either..."  
  
Lyle stopped pacing and whirled to throw an accusing finger into Sydney's face. "Yeah? Well that will change after this is all over..."  
  
The Belgian's chestnut eyes gazed up at his captor with pity. "I seriously doubt that."  
  
"They'll have a lot more respect for me when I not only give you the privacy to die in agony without causing an uproar, but by bringing Jarod back to the Centre to boot," Lyle snapped irritably. "When I do what nobody's been able to manage to do in over five years, I'll be a helluva lot higher on the corporate ladder than just Cleaner..."  
  
Sydney stared at Lyle for a moment, dumbfounded, then began to chuckle in real amusement. "You? Capture Jarod all by yourself? You ARE crazy."  
  
Lyle took on a lecturing tone and began pacing again so as not to be tempted to try to throttle the arrogant psychiatrist. "My sister never could appreciate just what a valuable resource you could be in bringing Jarod back to the fold. I've always been aware that all it would take would be your welfare being threatened," he flashed his cold smile again. "It would bring out the knight in shining armor in Jarod, and he'd come charging to your rescue."  
  
"I don't know what you've been drinking," Sydney replied wryly, "but it has definitely fogged your wits. Jarod wouldn't jeopardize his freedom for me..."  
  
"Now THAT is where you are wrong, my friend," Lyle began pacing again. "Jarod has a definite soft spot in his heart for you - or he wouldn't have come after Nicholas when I captured HIM to get to you and through you to Jarod. I have to admit, I miscalculated in that I didn't expect the BOTH of you to come to the rescue... TOGETHER..." That incident still smarted - Sydney had kept him distracted inside the farmhouse with Nicholas while Jarod had incapacitated the sweepers ranging outside to effect his capture. And then Jarod had proceeded to scare the crap out of him too - but thank heavens nobody suspected the depth of that humiliation except his sister, and even she didn't know the half of it. If she had, he'd have never heard the end of it.  
  
"You didn't expect me to come to rescue my son?" Sydney shook his head in disbelief.  
  
"I did, but..." Lyle shook his head - this was too confusing. "My father never came to MY rescue, did he?" he shot back angrily as an afterthought, then wiped his face with the hand that had all its fingers and resumed his pacing.   
  
"Lyle, your father didn't even know you existed..." the psychiatrist began, only to have Lyle come at him shaking a finger in his face.  
  
"Like Hell he didn't. After all, we all know that Mr. Raines, rather than Mr. Parker, was my... our... sire. And HE knew very well that I had survived!" Lyle's face was flushed. "He... GAVE me to those incompetents, the Bowman's - and then saw to it that the old man learned how to 'properly' discipline me. That damned..." Lyle took a deep breath to try to calm himself.   
  
Sydney, on the other hand, saw an opening. "Speaking of Mr. Raines, does he know what you're doing now, and approve of it?" he asked quietly.  
  
"No." The answer was flat, final. "And as long as I bring Jarod in at the end, he doesn't need to know either. The orders about you don't require his agreement - never did." Lyle's expression grew cold and calculating. "And once I have Jarod safely back in the Centre, I'll be able to argue for his removal as Chairman - and for my promotion to the position I've worked my whole life to earn."  
  
"You're playing a dangerous game there..." Sydney shook his head. "Raines has many allies within the Centre - and you have many enemies. Others have tried to remove him before you and failed..."  
  
"You mean that stupid stunt of shooting out his oxygen tank?" Lyle's chuckle was a cold one. "You should have taken TWO shots and killed him first, THEN blown him to smithereens. God, Syd, can't you do ANYTHING right?"  
  
Sydney stifled the surprise before it could appear on his face. "You know as well as I that I was never found responsible..."  
  
Lyle gave him a sideways glance and began pacing again. "And you know as well as I do that you did it. Even the Triumvirate accepted that as the most likely scenario for the botched assassination attempt."  
  
"Raines has more lives than a cat," Sydney stated flatly, refusing to back down or admit anything.  
  
"So?" Lyle retorted sharply. "The old bastard can't live forever - and it's long since time that a younger, more capable man stand at the helm of the Centre. All it will take is for me to bring Jarod in, and the Triumvirate won't have to look very hard for his replacement... when the time comes..." He grinned to himself. "And I can make sure that time comes sooner rather than later..." He glanced at Sydney, sitting so stubbornly smug in the chair, and frowned briefly. "How's the stomach?" he queried in a light tone.  
  
Sydney shrugged. He didn't feel wonderful, but he also wasn't hurting. "About the same," he reported without much concern in his voice. He looked up into his captor's face and saw the disappointment flit across the younger man's features. "Sorry," he apologized insincerely. It was a point of power when he had very little with which to work to NOT be falling ill at the time Lyle obviously was expecting.  
  
Lyle shrugged too. "Maybe they were a little off on the timeframe," he hedged, justifying the lack of symptoms to himself in frustration. "We just have to be patient."  
  
"What about the woman?" Sydney decided to push slightly and see where it would lead. After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do... "Did you poison her too?"  
  
Lyle stared at him with an open mouth for a moment. "Of course not!" he burst out in irritation. "If I did that, then I wouldn't be able to..." He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and gave Sydney another sideways glance. "Besides, *I* didn't poison you, that was the Triumvirate."  
  
"And you say she was only bait..."  
  
"That's right."  
  
"Well, then, now that you have me, surely you can just let her go..."  
  
"And have her identify me? Are you crazy?" Lyle laughed in surprise. "Besides," his look darkened, "I have more plans for her - for both before... and after..."  
  
"Her disappearance - and your face in the newspapers - is going to leave a trail. The Triumvirate won't like that..."  
  
"Shows how much YOU know," Lyle sneered and began pacing again. "You forget that I don't exist anymore - Mr. Bowman is sitting and rotting in prison for killing me! Except at the Centre and for the Triumvirate, I am a non-person."  
  
"When they find her body..."  
  
"Who said the authorities will ever find her?" Lyle chuckled at him. "There are all SORTS of ways to make a body disappear, Syd..."  
  
Sydney swallowed hard and then forced himself to look into Lyle's face without flinching. "Consuming them..."  
  
Something washed past the background of Lyle's eyes, something that made Sydney's stomach turn. "That's one way," Lyle admitted blandly. "A very enjoyable way too..."  
  
Sydney forced himself to continue to look at Lyle evenly. "What on earth ever possessed you to start doing such... morally reprehensible things to your fellow human beings?"  
  
"Try having my childhood," Lyle answered sourly, resuming his pacing, "and then imagine what it means to become one of Raines' protégés. HE sent me to learn the drug trade in Thailand from a man named Chin Than - remember him?" Sydney nodded. "It was Than that introduced me to..." Lyle caught himself just before he began to give away his life's story. "Ah-ah-aaaah," he waved a cautionary finger back and forth. "I'm not about to let you earwig me... psych me out... confuse me..."  
  
"I beg your pardon?" Sydney blinked. "All I wanted to know was what it took to make a man into a monster."  
  
"Is that what I am?" Lyle stopped pacing and thought a moment. "Yes, I suppose you're right - I am." He looked at Sydney, sitting there so calmly. "But am I a monster because of what I do, or is it that the actions I was taught to do by others that turned me into a monster?"  
  
Sydney merely kept his gaze calm and non-confrontational. "What do you think?"  
  
"I think that you're talking too much," Lyle snapped, his frustration returning, and then resumed pacing. He checked his wristwatch and then shot a glare at his captive. "Damn it!"  
  
"What are you waiting for so impatiently?" Sydney asked calmly, dropping the more delicate subject and going for something that would tell him something useful about his current situation.  
  
Lyle glared at him again, knowing as well as Sydney that the real cause of his agitation was the obvious wellbeing of the man handcuffed and tied to the chair. "The question isn't what so much as whom," Lyle answered cryptically, trying to throw Sydney a curve that would shatter that damned collected façade once and for all.   
  
Sydney shook his head. "I already told you, Jarod won't come."  
  
Lyle's blue-grey eyes glittered. "You know, if you had any future, I'd bet you real money on that. But as it is... Between the chance to rescue you and to add another name to the list of victimized innocent to his list of admirers, however, you KNOW he'll show. When you end up MIA at your own speech, he'll come running, find the note I left for him on YOUR bed - and I've paid for the room to remain as is for six days, so it WILL be there - and then come here. Of course, by then, it will be too late - and I'll have my Pretender, and with him the key to the Chairman's office."   
  
Sydney sat straight, seemingly untouched by the casual comment about his having no future. If Lyle thought that he was behaving in an intimidating manner, he had forgotten that Sydney could remember very clearly being intimidated by professionals. Lyle was behaving erratically with the potential for behaving monstrously, whereas the Nazis who had controlled his fate for years at Dachau had been true monsters.   
  
"Does it bother you that I might think of you as a monster?" he asked in his calm, professional voice again, returning to the topic that seemed to keep Lyle a little off-balance and distracted. Anything to buy himself the time to think of a way to warn Jarod away. Lyle was right, unfortunately - Jarod WOULD come. Or Miss Parker would... Either possibility was unthinkable.  
  
"No, it doesn't bother me that you might think of me as a monster," Lyle replied in exasperation. "Being a monster has its benefits - people tend to bend over backwards to do what I want them to do rather than have me turn into a monster for THEM. They stay out of my way otherwise."  
  
"Sounds like a monster's life must be a pretty lonely one..."  
  
Lyle shot Sydney a sharp look. "Not really," he answered in patently false nonchalance. "You'd be surprised - I don't have THAT hard a time finding a date in the Asian community. Lots of those girls want to hook up with American guys."  
  
"But you kill and eat them when you get tired of them."  
  
He shrugged. "Some of them can't take a hint, I guess."  
  
"The young lady you took the other day..."  
  
"Can identify me," Lyle interrupted and finished the sentence. "When the police come to investigate the circumstances of your death, I don't want to leave anyone who can point fingers and say 'HE was there - HE did it!" Besides, since I knew that she wouldn't survive her usefulness anyway, I've indulged myself in several different ways with her already." He grinned evilly. "Shall I tell you about it? How about psychoanalyzing the behavior of a serial rapist and murderer in your final hours, Sydney?"  
  
"No, thank you. I don't need to hear the details." Sydney's eyes closed softly and briefly in sympathy for the horrific experience that young lady had probably already endured. "I'd rather understand you..."  
  
"Not that it will do you much good in the long run," Lyle smirked at him.  
  
Sydney decided to ignore the blatant attempt to rile him. He forced his voice back into calm professionalism. "So human life has very little value to you?"  
  
"It depends on the human and the circumstances," Lyle replied with a quixotic smile. "The girl - her value ended when you walked onto the property here. You, on the other hand, have value dead OR alive until Jarod walks onto the property."  
  
"But human life has no intrinsic value of its own, in your mind?"  
  
Lyle sat himself down on the ottoman in front of Sydney's chair, safely out of the Belgian's reach in case the psychiatrist had had any ideas of tackling him. "On the contrary. The value of human life is determined solely by what I can get out of it." He leaned back. "Besides, it's not as if I've been taking someone truly important away from the world - I take the refuse of humanity and make them into something special."  
  
"That girl isn't the refuse of humanity. She's an artist..."  
  
"I'm sure the lack of any of her future paintings won't change life as we know it later on," Lyle mocked. "I took a look at what she does - it's nothing but some of that abstract crap that any chimpanzee could come up with if given paint and brushes." He looked at his captive coldly. "She produces garbage - that makes HER garbage."  
  
Sydney shook his head. "She's a human being..."  
  
"She's bait, Sydney, just like you are." Lyle's pronouncement was stark and utterly without qualm. "And... afterwards... she's at least one good, nutritious meal."  
  
"What about mercy, compassion? Have they no place..."  
  
Lyle waved at him, dismissing his argument entirely. "Those are characteristics of weakness. All the truly powerful men in history gave very little thought to that sort of thing. Power comes only to those who aren't afraid to behave mercilessly. Empires rise that way - it's when the mealy-mouthed begin to sell mercy and compassion and all kinds of other sentimental crap that the empires fall."  
  
Greying eyebrows rose on the forehead. "And you see yourself building an empire?"  
  
Lyle gazed at the man directly. "Not necessarily building one, but managing and eventually running one, yes. The strength of the Centre has always lain in its ability to wield its power and authority without mercy. You know that one as well as I do - you've worked for them long enough..." He glanced at his wristwatch yet again and then gave Sydney a frustrated look. "How's your dinner sitting?"  
  
Sydney could hear the frustration building in that innocuous question and it made him smile perversely to think that his not getting sick on schedule was causing the man so much disquiet. "Fine," he answered with immense satisfaction. "It was a very tasty meal." As his answer only deepened Lyle's frustration, he offered another pointedly irritating, "Sorry to interfere with your plans..."  
  
"Shit." If the chemical had been ingested, and if it were working the way the Triumvirate had claimed it would, then Sydney should be starting to at least show beginning signs of heartburn. The Triumvirate had told him 'signs of extreme heartburn within three to five hours' - and the meal had been served long enough ago that SOMETHING should be happening by now. "You must not have eaten all of it. Did you skip anything...?"  
  
"I didn't touch the pilaf. I don't eat rice, not since Dachau." Lyle rose to his feet and began to pace again, his mind whirling. "Is that where the poison was?"  
  
"No, it wasn't poison per se," Lyle answered in disgust, his frustration making him honest. Damn it! He should have hung around the hotel kitchen, making sure the chemical had been ingested, rather than playing with his Prey here. The Triumvirate would be sure to make this lapse HIS entire fault.  
  
What the hell was he supposed to do NOW? Sydney wouldn't be dying of something that could be attributed to a heart attack, that was for sure - and that would cause comment, which his Triumvirate masters had distinctly told him to avoid. And when Jarod called, Sydney wouldn't be in agony... from that, at any rate...   
  
Lyle untied the rope holding Sydney to his chair and then hauled his gun out of his shoulder holster and motioned with it. "Up."  
  
Sydney rose obediently. Lyle was the one with the gun, not he, and the younger man was upset and nervous enough that he could have a very itchy trigger finger. "Where are we going?" the Belgian asked quietly instead.  
  
"We're going to take a little walk. Shut up and move."  
  
Sydney shrugged and turned in the direction Lyle was pointing - down a hallway and through a smaller parlor before turning and going through a glassed door and ending up in that pyramid-roofed sunroom. "Keep moving," Lyle directed sourly after opening the glass door so that he could push his captive out into the moonlit yard. "Around that way." The two men walked down a narrow walk that led between the stonework wall of the garage and the curved bulwark of the lighthouse, then around the curved wall to the door.   
  
At that point, Lyle took out a key, inserted it in the padlock holding the door closed, pulled the lock from the hasp and pushed the door open with his foot. "In." Sydney stepped cautiously into the total darkness, only to have a small light bulb suddenly flare into life and illuminate the interior of the structure.   
  
The interior of the lighthouse was sparsely furnished. Opposite the door was a mattress on the floor on which a woman, naked and curled into a fetal ball with her back to the door, huddled miserably. She started as the light came on, and Sydney could hear the sound of chains. "You wanted to know if she was still alive," Lyle pushed Sydney forward toward the mattress, "well, here she is."   
  
He dragged at her shoulder and forced her to turn over and face the two of them. "Isn't she a beauty?" Lyle asked, his hand now tracing the line of her bruised chin gently, making the poor girl squeeze her almond-shaped eyes closed tightly in revulsion. "She has all the traits of a classical Chinese beauty. It has been a real pleasure getting to know her better." As the younger man's hand wandered down the column of her neck and then over her breast in brazen audacity, a tear managed to escape from beneath one tightly sealed eyelid. Her revulsion and the chains making it impossible for her to avoid his advances were a powerful temptation to dalliance even now. "Have you ever seen such lines?" His hand slipped to the curve of her hip and then slid slowly and provocatively down her thigh.  
  
"For God's sake," Sydney barked at the thought that Lyle was going to ravish her again right in front of him. His heart ached for the poor girl who, from the looks of the bruising over a goodly part of her body and smears of blood on her inner thighs, had already suffered greatly. "Leave her alone!" Without thinking of his own current situation, he took one threatening step toward the mattress.  
  
Lyle straightened up and turned on Sydney in a sudden rage. He gave the psychiatrist a vicious shove, making him lose his balance and fall backward against the curved stone interior and hit his head painfully on the way down. "You don't tell me what to do, old man!" Lyle roared at him. "You're supposed to be dying, damn it! Now sit up!" he barked as Sydney began to sag, stunned almost unconscious from the blow to his head. Sydney struggled to do as he was told, only to find his handcuffs being attached to the stone wall by a short chain that would allow him very little movement.  
  
"At least here I'm not going to have to worry about what you might get into while I make my preparations for Jarod," the young Parker stated in matter-of-fact calmness. "I'd tell you to make yourself comfortable, but I seriously doubt there's any way for you to make yourself comfortable on a dirt floor." He chuckled at his own gallows humor. "Nighty-night, Syd."  
  
Lyle winked audaciously as he put up his hand and plunged the interior of the lighthouse back into profound darkness. Sydney could only hear the door open and close again, and then the sound of the padlock being firmly put back to prevent either their escape or anybody else finding them. The thick, stone walls no doubt prevented sound from escaping too, so there was no use screaming for help.   
  
He leaned his head against the cold stone and sighed. There WAS nothing that he could do to prevent Lyle from succeeding in his plans.  
  
Lyle stormed around the end of the lighthouse in the direction of the glass door of the sun room. He had a little time to figure out how to turn this entire affair around to his own benefit, the exact measure of that time being just how long it would be before Jarod realized his mentor had gone missing and came looking for him. It was now after midnight - Sydney's speech had been rescheduled, at Lyle's request, to nine in the morning. Sometime after that, Lyle imagined, he'd be getting a telephone call.  
  
A loud "Hoo!" startled him badly, and the quiet rustling of wings told him that he'd just been dive-bombed by one of the great horned owls of the area. He batted his hands about his head and connected, coming away with a couple of feathers that he tossed to the ground in startled pique. His heart pounding from the surprise, he walked quickly back through the sunroom to the living room and the wet bar and poured himself a stiff drink.   
  
He had to THINK!   
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
June 27  
  
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites Hotel  
  
Jarod calmly affixed the name badge to his sports coat jacket and casually browsed through the folder that had come in his symposium packet. Yes, there it was. Sydney was scheduled to speak at nine. He twisted his arm to look at his watch - ten minutes yet. He toyed with the idea of going upstairs and surprising Sydney in his hotel room, but dismissed the idea. If this symposium had any semblance of legitimacy, rattling Sydney before his speech would be to do his old mentor no favors. No, he'd wait until after the speech, when he'd corner the Belgian alone and give him the news about everything that he'd discovered.  
  
He was tired, running on adrenaline and caffeine now. He never had been able to rest well on buses and planes - and the bulk of his time between flights had been occupied with his computer search. He'd arrived in Santa Luisita just in time to pull into a local café and have a stack of pancakes for breakfast and change in the restroom into the more professional-looking suit and tie that he intended to use in his Pretend as Dr. Jarod Maslow, symposium invitee. Nobody had questioned his late arrival, not even the harried organizer he'd had to pressure for an event packet even after presenting his forged invitation.  
  
He wandered into the hall and found himself a place to sit toward the back and against a wall of the conference room. He didn't need the sudden sighting of his face amid the audience to spoil his old friend's concentration either. Slowly but steadily the hall filled with the other attendees, a few of whom Jarod recognized from his investigation of the sponsoring society and the publication involved in this entire affair.   
  
Twenty minutes later, however, he was worried. Sydney had not appeared to give his speech, and symposium organizers were huddled together with concerned faces. His chosen place close to a door, Jarod slipped out of the hall and walked over to the reception desk. He requested Sydney's room number, claiming to be an old friend of the psychiatrist who was concerned that he hadn't appeared when he was supposed to. At the sight of symposium organizers milling around in confusion, the hotel employee gave Jarod the information and then hurried over to see if she could be of any assistance to the larger group.  
  
Getting the locked hotel room door open was no challenge to the prepared Pretender, who then closed the door after himself. "Sydney?" he called out, not really expecting to hear an answer. He moved further into the room and took a careful, studying look around at the condition of the room.  
  
The bed hadn't been slept in. A newspaper was tossed casually on the foot of the bed, as if Sydney had been reading and then been interrupted. Sydney's garment bag hung in the closet empty - telling the Pretender that his mentor had at the very least dressed for dinner, but most likely never returned. The small suitcase sat on the stool open, and the bathroom held signs that Sydney had at least showered once - his toiletries were neatly arranged along beneath the mirror behind the sink.  
  
There were no signs of struggle. Jarod sank down onto the edge of the bed, staring around the empty room and trying to think of what might possibly have happened. As his eye cruised all the smaller details of the room, it fell on the newspaper and the picture on the front page - and Jarod pulled the paper closer to take a better look. Yes, that WAS Lyle in the background of the picture of the pretty Asian woman. Getting a sinking feeling in his stomach, he flipped over the paper so as to read the headline that went with the picture: "Local Activist Missing." Oh God, Jarod thought in alarm, not again! And then it struck him - Sydney must have seen this picture too! He wouldn't have...  
  
Jarod hauled out his cell phone and dialed Miss Parker.  
  
"What?" she demanded.  
  
"Has Sydney called you?" he asked without any explanation.  
  
"Just to let me know that he got there..." Miss Parker didn't go into details as to WHY Sydney was calling her to tell her of his safe arrival. Besides, she was sitting in the waiting room of the Urgent Care Medical Group in Dover waiting to have a stomach x-ray confirm or deny what the Lab-rat had told her the day before. "What's going on, Jarod?"  
  
"I'm in Sydney's hotel room. He was a no-show at his speech this morning..."  
  
"Say what?" Miss Parker demanded.   
  
"And there's a newspaper sitting on his bed with a picture of an oriental woman - a local activist here who's gone missing - and LYLE is in the background." Jarod closed his eyes and wished hard. "Please tell me Sydney called you, and that you sent him some backup, just in case he decided to pursue this on his own..."  
  
"God, no..." Something HAD happened, just as she had feared. Why hadn't he listened to her... "What are you going to do?"  
  
"I'll find him," Jarod promised her. "But this is Lyle we're talking about here..."  
  
"If anything happens to Sydney, I'll kill that rat-bastard myself," she hissed.  
  
"Only if I don't get to him first," Jarod promised ominously. "Stay close to your phone." He disconnected quickly, picking up the newspaper to read the article more fully. A small, white paper fell from the newsprint and onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and then turned it over to find writing on the other side.  
  
"Took you long enough to figure this out. If you want to see either Sydney or the girl in the article alive, call 302-555-8987. - Lyle"  
  
Jarod sank back onto the bed weakly. Lyle was using Sydney as bait to catch him - and the worst part of it was that there was no way the Pretender could stand by and let that monster keep either Sydney or that Asian woman any longer than necessary. Something HAD to be done.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House  
  
Lyle unlocked the padlock and threw open the door to the lighthouse, then reached through and turned on the light. Against the wall where he'd been pushed, Sydney blinked at the sudden and almost painful illumination, while on the bed, Lori Cheung again rolled her body up into a little ball and turned away from him. Just the sight of that smooth skin and firm buttocks made Lyle's groin twitch. He wished he had the time to play with her a little bit again - and the thought of doing so in front of a helpless and outraged Sydney had a delightfully twisted allure to it. But something told him that he had best tend to business and finish his arrangements before he got that phone call he'd been waiting for all night. It was after nine o'clock in the morning, after all...  
  
"Up and at 'em, Sydney," he chirped gaily, moving quickly to the psychiatrist's side and unchaining him from the wall. "Time for you to come back into the house."  
  
"What about her?" Sydney asked, jerking his nose toward the traumatized young woman on the mattress. He'd tried his best to calm her during the night, only to find her unable of any coherent communication at all. She'd lain there in the pitch darkness, sobbing her heart out.  
  
"I'll be back out for her later," Lyle told him shortly, hauling up hard on Sydney's bound arms. "Right now, my plans are for you." He jerked the Belgian around and pushed him through the open door and into the even brighter morning sunlight. Sydney's eyes filled protectively with tears, making it hard to see and giving Lyle a chance to lock the lighthouse door again before hauling at the arm again to direct Sydney back toward the main house.   
  
"What do you want of me now?" Sydney asked, his voice calm in direct contrast and challenge to Lyle's obvious attempt to intimidate.  
  
"I'm expecting a call any moment now," Lyle explained with astonishing patience, "and you will need to be there when that call comes. After all, all Jarod knows is that you didn't show up for your speech, and that the note in the newspaper on your bed says that if he wants to see you alive again, he has to call ME." He chuckled at his ingenuity.   
  
"And just how is my presence when you get a phone call going to help you?" Sydney asked in amusement.   
  
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how useful you will be during that phone call," Lyle smirked. He pushed Sydney through the open glass door and into the sunroom.   
  
"Will you at least allow me to use the bathroom?" Sydney grumbled, not quite in distress. It had been a very long night, sitting there in the darkness. He'd known the moment he'd arisen that his bladder wouldn't take much more abuse.  
  
Lyle sighed heavily and pulled open the far door and pushed his prisoner through and into the hallway they'd been in the night before. He pulled open one of the doors along the way and pushed Sydney in. "What?" he demanded when Sydney just stood there.  
  
"Unless you intend to do the honors," the psychiatrist said in what he hoped were very calm and collected tones, "I'll need the use of at least one hand."  
  
Lyle pulled out his gun as well as his keys. He buried the muzzle of the weapon in the silvered hair beneath Sydney's left ear. "Just one twitch other than the necessary," he hissed in warning, then unlocked the right wrist. "Hurry up," he urged then.  
  
He pulled the right arm back behind the psychiatrist the moment he heard the zipper for the second time. "Thank you," Sydney said quietly, unwilling to let the incivility of his host deprive him of his own social training. His physical relief was almost staggering.  
  
"Shut up," Lyle growled, disgusted that he'd been blindsided and so easily convinced to let the man make himself more comfortable. Watching Sydney attempt to keep his damnable calm and patience after soiling himself might have been an interesting study in the psychology of stress and crisis.   
  
He dragged the psychiatrist out of the bathroom and prodded him down the hallway again with the muzzle of his gun in the small of Sydney's back. In the living room he directed the Belgian to take a seat on the couch and then took up occupancy himself in the easy chair he'd tied Sydney into the night before. "You're not feeling quite so smart now, are you?" he asked, smirking triumphantly.  
  
"Intelligence has little to do with it," Sydney responded after thinking for a moment. "Unless, of course, you're referring to my coming here without calling for backup... And you have no way to know for sure whether I did or not."  
  
Lyle shook his head discouragingly. "I wasn't born yesterday, Syd. If you'd called for backup, they would have been here already. No, you were definitely not smart - and now here you are, counting down your final hours on earth. It's GOT to be bothering you..."  
  
Sydney eyed the young Parker with sudden disdain. "What's bothering me are your endless attempts to try to get under my skin. Frankly, I find your efforts at intimidation pathetic. If you intend to kill me, I do wish you'd get it over and done with. In many ways, you'll be doing me a favor."  
  
Lyle stared for a moment, and then chuckled uncomfortably. "Very good, Sydney. You had me almost believing you have a death wish." He waved the gun back and forth. "I told you, don't try to earwig me - I'm onto you and your games."  
  
Sydney opened his mouth to counter Lyle's statement, but just at that moment, the cell phone in Lyle's pocket began to chirp.  
  
"I was starting to think you didn't care about him after all," Lyle sneered as he put the appliance to his ear.  
  
"Where's Sydney?" Jarod demanded. "Where's the girl?"  
  
Lyle smiled. Yes, he definitely had Jarod hooked - all he had to do was reel him in now. "All in good time, Jarod. Before I start telling you things, I want to make sure you understand completely what all is at stake here."  
  
"What? I know you have Sydney - and a young woman who has never done anything at all to you," Jarod stated in condemnation. And I know that you think that you can get to me by threatening them."  
  
"Very good. And am I so very far off in my estimation?"  
  
Jarod sighed. The inexhaustible arrogance of the man never ceased to amaze him. "I'm talking to you, aren't I?" he snapped back. "Now, quit stalling and tell me what you want me to do."  
  
"First, I want you to listen." Lyle rose from his chair, raised his gun, took careful aim, and fired. Sydney collapsed back against the cushion of the couch with a groan as the bullet ripped through his belly.  
  
"What the Hell are you doing?" Jarod screamed as the sound of a gun going off exploded painfully in his ear.  
  
"Do you hear this, Jarod?" Lyle asked blandly, carrying the cell phone over to the couch and leaning over Sydney, pushing on the man's damaged abdomen and making him cry out yet again.  
  
"Damn you, Lyle!"  
  
"That's just to convince you that there is a certain measure of urgency here. Needless to say, Sydney is now bleeding - and you'll be wanting to follow my directions to the letter if you hope to see him again before he bleeds out."  
  
"Jarod, don...AAAAH!" Sydney tried to interrupt, only to have Lyle push on his wounded stomach again and bring the agony forward again.  
  
"Tell me what you want!" Jarod demanded desperately.  
  
"Take the freeway south from Santa Luisita until you get to the Spyglass exit," Lyle started and then gave Jarod detailed instructions on how to get to the Triumvirate safe house. "From the looks of things here, you have about a half an hour before the blood loss begins to get critical."  
  
Jarod was already moving out Sydney's hotel doorway and down the corridor toward the elevators. "I'm on my way," he said in a low and dangerous tone. "Sydney had better still be alive when I get there, or else..."  
  
"Or else what, Jarod?" Lyle asked derisively. "Oh, and just in case I forget to tell you later..." He paused.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"It's so GOOD to be doing business with you again."  
  
Jarod pulled the cell phone away from his ear with a blistering longshoreman's curse and disconnected the call before he could hear Lyle's mocking laughter coming from the little receiver. The elevator had never taken so long to get to that floor...  
  
"C'mon," Lyle said brightly, hauling the wounded man to his feet. "I don't need you bleeding to death on the nice furniture. Let's find you a nice quiet bedroom where you can destroy bed clothing in peace."  
  
Sydney groaned and barely managed to drag his feet along at the pace Lyle set. He knew he was hurt badly - and that he had indeed been used as bait on a phone call. Once more he hadn't been able to protect his protégé.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Central California Coast ~ Southbound freeway  
  
Jarod barely noticed the beautiful gold of the hills through which he was driving, nor looked about him to appreciate how the dark green of the live oaks complemented the scenery. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out just how he was going to walk into what was obviously a trap and escape again with Sydney in time to get his mentor to a hospital. There was another innocent involved as well, but the most pressing matter at the front of his mind was Sydney and how badly he was hurt.   
  
The scenarios playing out in his mind were not having positive outcomes. It was, after all, broad daylight - there would be no skulking in shadows until surveillance cameras were conveniently pointed in the wrong direction. Lyle had outdone himself this time, raised the stakes, and forced the matter. That fact alone lowered the odds of success, and Jarod knew it.  
  
He debated calling Miss Parker, then discarded the idea. With any luck, she was getting herself taken care of - and she was an entire continent away. Besides, if Lyle was working under Raines' orders, any time spent rustling up sweeper assistance to save Sydney would be wasted. Jarod steered the mini-SUV he'd rented for the day down the freeway exit and to the left into the sleep seaside town. No, he'd have to figure this one out on his own and on the fly.   
  
He turned down the street instructed and waited at the stop sign as he looked over to the left and figured out just which house he'd been instructed to go to. If it weren't for the time constraint of not knowing how badly Sydney was injured, he could approach the property from below. The rocks on the promontory were scalable - and he doubted any security cameras were aimed seaward against rock-climbing intruders. With a critical eye, he guessed at how many more streets to the left he'd have to go to approach the house directly, or maybe even slightly beyond, then flipped a U-turn and went back up to the busy business lane which was the only cross street. He drove slowly past each one, keeping an eye to his position in relation to the tall pine trees across the street from the expansive estate, then finally headed down another.  
  
About five houses up from the end, he pulled his SUV over to the side and parked and climbed out. At the end of the street he could see the stucco and ironworks wall and outbuildings beyond. He walked carefully down the street, watching to see if he could catch sight of any surveillance equipment aimed at the street in front of the property. He stopped behind a hedge at the end of the street and studied the situation.  
  
There was indeed a camera that was aimed at the street - or at least at the sidewalk that entered the property through the wall. There was one other opening to the street in the wall - Jarod kept behind as many trees and bushes as he could without calling attention to himself so that he could get a better look at what lay behind. That opening turned out to be more of a service entrance - a dirt drive lading behind a small orchard of fruit trees toward a Danish-styled windmill, past the trash containers and compost heaps. Jarod eyed the trees and the wall suspiciously. There was no camera coverage - either an open invitation, or a flaw in the security - and Jarod doubted that on property as expensive and well maintained as this, there would be too many security flaws.  
  
He had three choices: attempt to climb the rocks from below, breech the gate here at the more forgotten end of the property, or brazenly - perhaps foolishly - walk in the front gate. If he knew Lyle at all, the slime-ball was probably expecting him to attempt a more covert entrance. And yet, if he walked right up to the front door, he would be just asking to be captured before he had the slightest chance to get to Sydney. He grimaced in frustration, knowing that Lyle's trap was practically unavoidable. What to do?  
  
He had to THINK!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Dover, Delaware ~ Urgent Care Medical Group  
  
"You know, you're the second person in as many days with this very same complaint," Doctor Weiss commented, shaking his head as he put up yet another x-ray that indicated the presence of another of those metal encapsulated implants. "I took something very much like this out of a young man just this morning before coming here..."  
  
"I know," Miss Parker replied sourly, sick to her stomach at the visual evidence that Jarod had NOT been just jerking her chain - and anecdotal evidence that Broots too had had this evil visited on him. She didn't even want to think about the fact that it had been Daddy who had authorized this violation. "So how soon can you remove mine?"  
  
The doctor was already seated and writing. "I'll schedule you for morning surgery, just like I did for your friend. Don't eat or drink anything by mouth after midnight tonight." He pulled the top page off of the prescription pad. "And take these now to neutralize any stomach acid."  
  
Miss Parker accepted the small square of paper and folded it precisely. "Did you do any testing on the capsule you removed from my fr... that young man's stomach?"  
  
"As a matter of fact, no," Weiss replied with a frustrated frown. "The young man insisted on taking it with him when he was finished in Recovery."  
  
That figured, she considered as she shouldered her purse and walked from the examination room. Broots knew better than to call attention to the fact that, if Jarod was right - and at this point she had no reason to doubt his information - he'd been given an implant loaded with a lethal poison. She would have done the same herself - only she would have just as soon thrown the retrieved implant at Daddy the next time she saw him, along with her resignation. She'd be in touch with Broots soon enough to try to talk him into tendering his resignation too. But she would also be pocketing her retrieved implant - she didn't need the news of this leaking out to the public. Not before she and Broots were clear of the place, that was.  
  
She stopped at the receptionist's desk only long enough to pay for the bill and make a follow-up appointment, then walked briskly from the office and straight to her car. She looked at her watch and frowned - and then followed her hunch to pull out her cell phone and dial a number she'd otherwise only seen once in her caller id.  
  
"What?" Jarod's voice sounded distracted, tense.  
  
"What have you found out?" she demanded with no preamble.  
  
Jarod sighed. "I know for a fact that Lyle has Sydney - and if my ears didn't deceive me, he shot him while I was on the phone talking to him."  
  
"WHAT?!"  
  
"I found a note..." Jarod leaned against the tree trunk of the palm tree across the way from the service entrance he'd decided was his best bet. "In it, Lyle told me that if I wanted to see Sydney alive again, I was to call him. I did - and there was the sound of a gunshot while we were talking, and I could hear Sydney..." Jarod paused and Miss Parker swallowed in distress. "Anyway, Lyle directed me to this house..."  
  
"And that's where you are now?"  
  
"Outside the perimeter, yes. I've been trying to figure out the best way in."  
  
"Be careful," she found herself warning him unexpectedly. "And call me when you know something."  
  
"I'll do what I can," Jarod promised provisionally. "But I don't know what I'm walking into here - or what shape Sydney's in."  
  
"Just get him out of there in one piece!" Miss Parker insisted with worried vehemence.  
  
Jarod disconnected the call and put his cell phone on silent before clipping it back onto his belt. He didn't need another call giving away his position if he had the immense good luck to end up in a game of cat and mouse. He looked both ways before sprinting across the street and up to the ironwork of the service gate.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House  
  
Lyle zipped up his pants and reached for his tee shirt, looking down at the body of Lori Cheung as he popped his head through the elasticized opening. With the trap for Jarod almost sprung, he had decided to allow himself this one very necessary moment of pleasure before the heavy business ahead. The act of raping and now killing his oriental beauty would help steady his concentration - with that accomplished, half of the ritual of the Hunt was now complete. He was always better able to concentrate immediately following the events of a Hunt.  
  
Besides, Lyle knew all too well that being in a position to throw into the Pretender's face the fact that Jarod WOULDN'T be in time to save this one innocent could give him an emotional edge in the situation to come. Keeping Jarod off-balance and on the defensive was going to be the ONLY way this plan would work, and the question of the welfare of his captives - especially Sydney - was the best way to keep Jarod off-balance.   
  
He tipped his wrist and checked the time. If he knew Jarod, the Pretender was more than likely already on the property, if not casing the place from the street. He reached down and laid claim to the fillet of sweet meat that he had carved from the girl's flank prior to dressing. He should be able to get it onto a plate and into the refrigerator before the rest of the day's business got started in earnest.  
  
Even though there was nothing to worry about as far as having a captive escape, he locked the door of the lighthouse behind himself and headed back down the narrow path between it and the garage that ended at the sunroom door. Halfway to the French doors that led deeper into the house, the device on his belt began to vibrate. Lyle smiled - the motion detectors in the orchard were indicating an intruder. He slipped through the doors and trotted down the hallways and around a corner to put his dinner on a plate already in the refrigerator. Tonight the stir-fry would be a genuine celebration!  
  
Then he moved surely back to a small room off of the living room that was filled with all sorts of electronics. He checked the monitors and motion detector meters and then nodded in satisfaction. Jarod had been all too predictable - he'd come onto the property through the service entrance. His one worry that the wily Pretender would come at him from the ocean side of the property, the side that had the least security coverage due to the fickle nature of the rocky cliffs and the ocean currents below, evaporated immediately. He had guessed that Jarod would feel time-constrained and anxious to find his wounded mentor and therefore choose the less covert option of coming in from street level - and he'd been right. With a pleased grin on his face, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that he was starting to get the hang of dealing with the slippery Pretender after all.  
  
Jarod moved around the edge of an apple tree cautiously, heading for the cover of the orange tree beyond. He crouched down and slid beneath the foliage and then frowned at what he'd found. Wired to the trunk of the tree, close to the ground, was a small electronic emitter - a motion detector.  
  
Damn, he chided himself, and gazed back at the tree he'd just left to find the receiver for that particular unit. He might as well walk up to the front door and pound on it, demanding entrance, at that rate. Lyle was being cagey - and this estate was more than securely protected. The realization came over him, and he sagged in response. Of course! This was one of the legendary Triumvirate safe houses that were scattered all across the globe - with some of the tightest and up-to-date security provisions known to the technological world. Hell, he'd helped design some of the security systems no doubt in place here!   
  
Well, an informed intruder could still infiltrate some of the tightest security measures imaginable. Jarod checked the tree trunk for more units, and found that the detectors were set out to establish a grid within the orchard. He checked higher in the tree to make sure there were no unexpected surprises, then cautiously stepped over the invisible beam between himself and the next tree. Keeping himself low to the ground, he approached the tree cautiously, taking note of the emitter and receiver units wired to that trunk and being careful not to break another of the invisible beams.  
  
The sound of running water was growing closer as he moved cautiously and deliberately from one tree to the next. Finally he had reached the edge of the orchard and gazed with some surprise and appreciation at the impressive structure ahead of him. Built in the Japanese style, the green-tiled roof was supported by six massive carved and painted round, wooden beams. In the center of the sheltered space was a round fountain with a brass dolphin, blue with weathering and patina, leaping from amid the arcing streams of water.   
  
Jarod peered carefully up into the rafters of this impressive and unexpected obstacle. Yes, the cameras were there - he could only hope that his image hadn't already been detected by whoever was keeping an eye on the monitors. He carefully and deliberately headed just a little further back into the orchard so that he could work his way around the end of the structure. The longer he could manage to keep avoiding motion detectors and camera angles, the better.  
  
Lyle's eyes kept sweeping back and forth from the motion detector meters and the monitors from the cameras mounted in the fountain area. If he were to trust the electronics, Jarod had been motionless for the past ten minutes - and he seriously doubted that the Pretender would have just sat still and waited. He cursed in Thai, figuring out that Jarod must have discovered the grid of motion detectors in the trees and found a way to avoid them. He turned his attention to the monitors from the cameras at the fountain. That was a very open area in the garden, where there was precious little to hide behind to avoid the cameras.   
  
Nothing! Not the slightest sign of movement could be seen.  
  
Lyle seated himself in the chair and leaned his chin in his hand, fuming. Games of patience and stealth were never as much fun on the receiving end as they were on the stalking end - and right now, Jarod was the stalker, and a damned good one at that. It would take a sharp eye and no small amount of luck to catch the Pretender making even the smallest mistake.   
  
Jarod looked at his watch. It was nearly an hour since Lyle had shot Sydney - depending on the seriousness of the wound, every moment he was spending trying to closer to the house by stealth was bringing Sydney closer to death. The back side of the Danish-style windmill had been remarkably free of surveillance - and between shrubs rose bushes that lined the back walkway to the sheltered patio, he had made progress. The sheltered patio abutted the house, and there the surveillance cameras weren't hard to spot. There were three of them, rotating in an apparently random pattern so that an intruder couldn't predict a moment when it was safe to move.   
  
Then he smiled grimly. The far camera wasn't panning the entire sweep of its range - its program kept it aimed on the patio itself and not the cypress-covered promontory beyond it. Jarod eyed the path that ran behind the tall brick and glass wall around the patio - there was no sign of motion detectors at all. There wasn't much land beyond the wall to begin with, for the ocean had washed much of what must have once been there away. Jarod crouched and once more began his forward movement along the back of the wall. A couple of times the sprinkler-dampened topsoil threatened to give way beneath him, forcing him to move forward a little faster than he'd intended, but soon enough he was on the back side of the wall.   
  
Now, finally, he could move to stand with his back against the cold stucco of the house and wait for the cameras to offer him that split moment of opportunity. No doubt there was security on the door itself - he had already accepted that entering the house without raising alarm would be impossible. Jarod wiped the perspiration from his brow and prayed that the surprise of intrusion at that particular point into the house itself would be enough to give him a slight advantage until he could take the measure of what lay in store for him within.  
  
He looked upwards, over his shoulder, at the house itself - and stared at the immense piece of good fortune that had been just waiting for him to look up and notice. One of the second-floor windows was open - hanging out like a little glass door beckoning. Jarod looked around him to see what he could use to hoist himself far enough into the air that he could get his hands on the bottom of that sill. Just inside the patio itself was a chair - a piece of delicate ironwork lawn furniture - something that could be leaned against the stucco and give his feet the smallest purchase in reaching for the sill.   
  
Jarod cast an eye back at the cameras sweeping the patio. He would have to choose his two moments carefully. In the first moment, he would have to reach around - running the risk of giving his position away - to snatch the chair around the end of the wall. The second moment would be the trickier, for that would be when he would definitely be out where a camera could catch sight of him going up the side of the house over the top of the wall. But the only alternative to that was to go through the glassed door and announce his entrance as if at the top of his lungs.  
  
Lyle's patience was wearing thin. He had risen and was now pacing back and forth in front of the bank of monitors and meters which, to his chagrin and disgust, still showed absolutely nothing. Not for the first time did he resent the Triumvirate making this a solo performance - what he wouldn't have given to have Willy and a couple more of the better sweepers prowling the grounds and watching for the sneaky Pretender's next move.   
  
Then he had a horrible thought: what if Jarod was already IN the house? What if he'd already found Sydney? He glanced nervously at the surveillance monitors from within the house, finding them just as uncooperative as the outdoor ones had been. Did he dare leave his post and check on the wounded psychiatrist - make sure that Sydney was still slowly bleeding to death? He stared at the wooden door behind him - did he dare NOT check on him?  
  
Paranoia won out. Lyle opened the door and hurried across the living room to the vast foyer and the staircase, heading for the guestroom into which he had deposited Sydney. He grimaced as he noticed the occasional drop of blood on the expensive carpeting that covered the stairs - he could expect the cleaning costs for the rug to come out of any bonus he'd be getting for bringing in the elusive Pretender.  
  
Jarod had his chair, and had it positioned just so against the stucco side of the house. Now all he needed was a moment when all the cameras would be facing in another direction entirely... There! In an instant, he was standing on the seat, and then boosting himself high in the air with his foot on the top ironwork leaning against the stucco. And it did indeed get him high enough to reach the bottom of the windowsill. Using muscles that constant work-outs in the gym kept in top form, Jarod pulled himself up the wall and then tipped himself over the windowsill and onto the floor as quietly as he could.   
  
He looked around - he was in a guestroom. The furnishings were antique, well maintained and extremely expensive-looking. The rug on the polished wooden floor was high quality Persian, thick and warm. A quick and thorough glance about the room told him that there was no camera here - granted that his entry had been unobserved, there was no indication that he'd penetrated the house at all as yet. He moved stealthily over to the door and cracked it just enough to peer down the hallway - and his eyes opened wide.  
  
Lyle was stalking down the hallway toward him. Jarod froze, astonished that the man could have discovered his whereabouts so easily. And then his eyes widened even further and he let go of his breath in relief when Lyle paused in front of another door and pushed it open instead.  
  
Lyle grimaced in frustration. Sydney had been practically unconscious by the time he'd dumped him on the bed - but obviously no more. While obviously in a great amount of pain, the man was slowly working his way across the bed in the direction of the telephone located on the night stand.  
  
"No you don't," Lyle cautioned angrily and darted across the room to pull the telephone cord out of the wall. "There's going to be no help for you."  
  
"Lyle," Sydney's voice was weak and agonized, "in the name of God..."  
  
"Stuff it, Sydney. I have my orders. The Triumvirate wants you out of the way - and I'm going to give them what they want, even as you bring to me what I want."  
  
"Why?" The psychiatrist's voice was soft, confused, and a cough brought forth a small trickle of blood to run down the edges of his mouth along with a deep groan.  
  
"Because they know now what I've suspected all along - that you've been helping Jarod stay one step ahead of the search team, or sabotaged Miss Parker's aim when she would have shot the bastard and been able to bring him in damaged but alive." Lyle glared down at the older man, no longer bothering to hide his attitude. "You've been a pain in my ass all along. But you know what really made me happy to help the Triumvirate out in it's housecleaning? Finding out you helped Jarod get Gemini away from us - or did you think your little 'Refuge' file wouldn't come to the attention of others eventually? Do you know how long we'd been working on Gemini, getting him ready to take Jarod's place so that all we had to do was issue a standard termination contract - and your scruples just screwed everything up. You've made Miss Parker soft, and you've interfered with our hunt for Jarod - and the time has come for you to exit, stage right."  
  
Sydney coughed again and then groaned as the muscles needed to cough were the same ones that were so badly damaged already.  
  
"I told you," Lyle reminded him with cold satisfaction, "you have no future. You thought I was kidding?" He wrapped the telephone cord around the appliance and tucked it under one arm. "Now be a good boy and just lay there and bring Jarod to me so that I can bring him back to the Centre - and then the Triumvirate makes me Chairman in time. See? Everything works out for the best all the way around. So stop trying to be creative and just bleed to death quietly, please. I have a Pretender to catch and a dinner to make."  
  
He slammed the guestroom door closed for good measure and headed off down the hallway for the stairs again. He had to get back to the security room - Jarod HAD to give away his position sooner or later!  
  
Jarod waited until Lyle had turned the corner and started down the stairs before opening the door and slipping into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and then darting across the hallway and slipping into the room Lyle had just left. He closed the door very quietly behind him and then turned. His brows furled and his heart gave a worried leap as he took in the sight of Sydney facedown on the bed with a small pool of blood near his belly. He moved swiftly to his mentor's side and with gentle hands helped the man roll over onto his back.   
  
"Oh God," he sighed, appalled at the man's condition. "Sydney!"  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	5. The End

White Owl   
  
by MMB & NIOMR  
  
The End  
  
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House  
  
Sydney stirred as he felt his body being manipulated with more gentleness than he knew he could expect from Lyle - and his chestnut eyes slowly and finally opened. "Jar..."  
  
"No, Sydney, don't talk now," the Pretender ordered curtly, having already taken the pillowcase from the pillow and started tearing it into strips. "I've got to get you bandaged up here so I can get you out..."  
  
"Lyle... trap..."  
  
"I know." The dark chocolate gaze of his protégé penetrated Sydney's fog of agony. "But I don't think he knows I'm here yet - and that gives us a small advantage."  
  
"Jarod..." Sydney batted weakly at Jarod's hands as the Pretender pulled his dress shirt from his tuxedo trousers to get a better look at the wound and assess his condition. "I want... you... leave me. Don't let... Lyle..."  
  
"No. I'm not going to just abandon you to die, Sydney, so forget it." Jarod's voice was firm and final. "Now be quiet and let me think."  
  
Sydney coughed again, and then groaned in pain as yet another small bubble of blood found its way through his lips. Jarod took one of the strips and wiped away the mess. "Are you having trouble breathing?" he asked worriedly. The older man nodded slowly. "The bullet probably nicked your diaphragm and lung too. The good news is that you won't bleed to death right away - the bad news is that this is a nasty wound and is going to hurt like a son of a bitch when it comes time to move. It's also going to be a real bitch to get over once we get you to the hospital."  
  
"I can't... move... feet..." Sydney managed, closing his eyes against the pain.   
  
Jarod breathed out in silent frustration. Sydney was in very bad shape and getting worse by the moment. The bleeding from the mouth meant there was a danger that his lungs might collapse as the abdomen filled with blood from the torn blood vessels or that he might drown in his own blood, and the paralysis meant that the bullet may very well have lodged in the spine. Lyle had known what he was doing when he fired that shot - he had intended Sydney to die slowly and painfully.   
  
He took the folded part of the pillowcase and pressed it carefully against the open, red mouth of the wound, then put Sydney's hand over the makeshift bandage while he started to knot strips of cloth together. "This will help a little," he said, easing the strip around Sydney's waist and bringing the ends up and over the bandage. He tied it tightly enough that the bandage wouldn't slip, but not so tightly that the pressure would make already traumatized muscles go into spasms.   
  
"Jarod..." Sydney struggled to get his protégé to listen to him. "You need... to get away - rob Lyle... of his prize. My death..."  
  
"You're NOT going to die on me!" Jarod insisted almost angrily.  
  
"Listen to me..." Sydney wheezed, and Jarod wiped away another crimson trickle. "The Triumvirate issued... termination order... for me. They... know..."  
  
"Know what?"  
  
"About Gemini... the 'Refuge' email..."  
  
Jarod shook his head. "So?"  
  
"I'm dead... even if I... survive this." The chestnut eyes gazed upward sadly. "Don't let... him take you... Leave me..."  
  
"I told you that's not an option," Jarod insisted in return.   
  
"I... can't... walk... I'll... only... slow you down..."  
  
"Listen to me, Sydney. I'm not leaving you."  
  
Sydney nodded in defeat, accepting that his protégé's loyalty simply wouldn't be swayed by reason or pleading. "Then you'll... have... to kill..."  
  
The dark chocolate gaze grew cold and determined. "Don't worry," Jarod replied in a deadly tone that Sydney had never heard before, "I have no intention of letting Lyle get away with things this time." He wiped away another bloody trickle from Sydney's lips. "Do you know where he's keeping the girl?"  
  
Sydney nodded slowly. "In... lighthouse... chained..."  
  
"Is she still alive?"  
  
The wounded man shook his head. "Don't... know... Was... last time... I saw her... But Lyle... left me... for a long... while... after shooting..."  
  
Jarod moved over to the door and peeked out into the hallway once more, this time to check for cameras. There was one, aimed almost directly at the door. He swore softly and closed the door again. "Are there any sweepers in the building?"  
  
Sydney shook his head slowly. "Only... Lyle."  
  
With that, the Pretender reached behind him and pulled a gun from his waistband and chambered a round. "Hang in there, Sydney," he shot back over his shoulder and then, after taking a final look at his wounded mentor, brazenly pulled the bedroom door open and walked out into the hallway as if he owned the house. His gun firmly in both hands, he made his way carefully down the hall toward the stairs.  
  
"Hey Jarod, pretty damned clever, your getting into the house that way," Lyle's voice wafted up the staircase, stopping him before he turned the corner or took a single step.  
  
"I thought so," Jarod answered in a confident tone, his back pressed against the wall near the stairwell.   
  
"How's Sydney?" Lyle's voice demonstrated his glee at the situation.  
  
"Still alive, which is a good thing for you..."  
  
Lyle chuckled. From the sound of it, Jarod guessed he was right at the base of the staircase - probably with his gun aimed up the stairs in case Jarod decided to make a suicide run at him. "Too bad the same can't be said of that pretty girl... what was her name? Lori? Yeah - that was it - Lori Cheung. I have a nice piece of flank steak chilling down in the fridge here for dinner later that came from her. After all, she didn't need it anymore..."  
  
Jarod swallowed hard to keep his temper from exploding. There had always been the chance that Lyle would murder either Sydney or the girl before he could get to them - and while he kicked himself for not being able to help the girl, Sydney was still alive in a room behind him. Whatever he did, he had to get Sydney out of there before...   
  
Lyle frowned - Jarod's silence at the taunt was unnerving. "Don't you want to know what I did to her BEFORE I killed her?" he sing-songed up the staircase. "How smooth her skin was, how tight and hot..."  
  
"You're pathetic," Jarod hissed in disgust.  
  
"You think so?" Lyle sounded as if the judgement bothered him not one whit. "Then again, you should have seen the look on Syd's face when I aimed my gun at him and shot him. I thought for a moment there that he didn't believe what I was doing - his look of surprise and shock in that last moment was absolutely priceless..."  
  
Jarod's jaw worked hard, and his dark eyes grew black with repressed fury. "Not only are you pathetic, but you're a coward. It's SO easy to kill helpless girls after you rape them or old men when you have them tied up and handcuffed into submission. But where's your courage now, Lyle? How come you're not coming up the stairs to get ME?"  
  
"I know better." Jarod could tell he'd scored his own set of hits by the lack of humor and beginning of anger in Lyle's voice now. "You're probably standing right at the head of the stairs waiting for me to come up."  
  
"But that shouldn't stop a big, brave man like you, Lyle," Jarod spat caustically so that Lyle could tell that he was being called anything BUT 'big' or 'brave'. "After all, you want this to convince the Triumvirate to give YOU the Big Chair when Raines has been taken care of, right? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you're not going to GET that Big Chair by cowering downstairs waiting for me to throw up my hands and surrender. You're going to actually have to take a few chances - risk getting your head blown off. That Big Chair ain't for ball-less sissies like you who pick on helpless girls and old men."  
  
"Well, you're not going to have your old friend alive for very much longer if you cower upstairs there," Lyle shot back, his temper rising dangerously. "How long do you suppose Syd has now before he's lost too much blood to recover? What will you do when he's gone and the reason he's dead is because YOU were too chicken to come down and take care of business?"  
  
Jarod got down on his hands and knees and crawled until he could just see down the staircase - then ducked back quickly as a bullet sang past his ear and buried itself in the wood paneling behind him. "Nice try, hot shot," Lyle gloated from his position on the landing. "I'm not as far away from you as you thought I was, am I?"  
  
The Pretender sat back up again at a point just out of Lyle's visual range. Frustrated, he looked down the hallway behind him, then snorted in satisfaction. "That may be," he teased the man on the landing, "but you still aren't getting any closer to that Big Chair for as long as you don't come up the rest of those stairs to face me." He rose to his feet and moved silently down the hallway to check and see if his knowledge of this house was as trustworthy as he hoped. Yes. As he had slowly come to suspect, this WAS one of the places for which he'd helped design the security - and part of the need expressed at the time was for an escape route from the upper floor in case of hostile intruders downstairs. With any luck, Lyle didn't know about the stairs that lay behind the door at the end of the hallway.  
  
Lyle ground his teeth together in frustration. This cat and mouse game was getting him nowhere. And unfortunately, Jarod was right - the Chairman's office wouldn't go to a man unwilling to put his ass on the line. But then, most of the time, the Chairman - or the candidate for the position - had backup. Now THERE was a thought... Would Jarod know that Lyle was alone?  
  
"Willy, you and Chet take point..." Lyle began.  
  
"Now who's trying to be a hot shot?" Jarod's mocking voice wafted down the hallway. "Willy and Chet are still in Blue Cove, and you know it. You're all on your own here - and no amount of play-acting can change that. What are you trying to do, anyway, psych me out so that when you pretend you have balls and come up the stairs, I'd be all scared and just hand over my weapon?"  
  
Lyle swore under his breath again at having his ploy so quickly exposed. "You know, life would be just SO much better with you locked away in the lowest recesses of the Centre doing your job again," he stated in his bland manner that he adopted when he was getting furious.   
  
"So sorry to foul up your plans," Jarod commented sarcastically. He opened the doorway into Sydney's room and put the man's arm around his neck. "You have to try to be quiet," he told his mentor firmly, and Sydney nodded his understanding. He dragged his mentor erect and then across the bedroom floor and out into the hallway. "But I have no plans to ever go back to the Centre - you know that," he tossed down the hallway.  
  
"You aren't really going to have much choice," Lyle answered, noticing that Jarod's voice sounded slightly further away than before. "What's the matter, getting nervous and needing to check on your surrogate daddy?"   
  
He listened carefully, but there was no sound coming from the upstairs any longer. He stretched carefully, as if expecting Jarod to suddenly pop around the corner with gun blazing - still nothing.  
  
Jarod had a desperate hold on Sydney's waist and kept his heels from dragging on the hallway carpet all the way down to the end doorway and staircase beyond. The door was still open, and Jarod carefully balanced Sydney against his hip while pulling the doorway closed behind them.   
  
The Belgian let go of a deep breath he had held desperately while being manhandled down the hallway, and it escaped his lips as a deep and agonized groan. Jarod only tightened his grip to start down the steep stairs. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Sydney, but I have to get you out of here..."  
  
"I'll only... slow you..." the psychiatrist complained futilely. He'd seen Jarod get into such moods before - stubborn and completely unwilling to consider any other option than the one he'd chosen. He looped his arm around Jarod's neck and held on weakly for whatever assistance it would give his protégé, and Jarod carefully maneuvered the two of them down the narrow staircase until they were facing the downstairs access doorway.  
  
Jarod let Sydney down and seated his mentor on the bottom steps of the stairs. "I'm going hunting," he announced finally. "You'll be about as safe here as anywhere. Wish me luck."  
  
"Jarod..." Sydney reached for his former student suddenly.   
  
Jarod captured the seeking hand in his. "What?"  
  
"Thank you." In the semi-darkness of the stairwell, Sydney's eyes glittered with unshed tears. "I am so... proud... of you."  
  
Jarod blinked and then squeezed the hand in his tightly. "You hang in there. Don't you die on me now..."  
  
Sydney coughed up another dark trickle down his chin. "I'll... try... not to..."  
  
Jarod pressed the gun into Sydney's hand. "If Lyle shows his face at the top of the stairs, shoot to kill, Sydney. Shoot to kill."  
  
"But... what... will you..."  
  
"Don't worry about me - I have some interesting ideas." Jarod assured him. "Just protect yourself, if it comes down to it. All right?"  
  
The hand with the gun fell limply into Sydney's lap while the old man nodded again. "Be careful," he intoned in a rough whisper.  
  
Jarod felt a stab of worry at his mentor's increasing weakness, but he shut the door to the stairs and began to work his way toward the central staircase upon which he and Lyle had had their taunting match. He passed through the kitchen and, almost as an afterthought, headed for the knife rack and chose a larger knife, suitable for slashing throats, as well as two smaller knives, suitable for throwing. Feeling a little less helpless, he moved into the short hallway that led to the foyer.  
  
Lyle was almost on his belly, mounting the final flight of stairs to the second floor one step at a time as low to the ground as he could get to avoid any bullets from Jarod's weapon - he assumed the Pretender would not have come into the house empty-handed. The two of them had tangled often enough that surely Jarod knew enough to bring something that would be as effective at killing him as his gun could be at maiming Pretenders. But still, there was no noise, no taunting voice - nothing.  
  
At last Lyle made it to the top of the stairs and, taking a deep breath, peeked just the top of his head around the corner to take a quick glimpse down the hall. The hallway was empty - all the doorways that opened onto it apparently closed. Lyle cursed harshly under his breath. Jarod could be hiding behind any one of those doors, just waiting for him to turn his back. Damn that Pretender! This was SUPPOSED to have been a quick grab powered by a headlong panic to save his mentor. With the virtually impenetrable security the Triumvirate had had installed here years ago, it seemed unbelievable that Jarod would have gotten inside with so little effort to once more bollix up carefully-laid plans by simply not agreeing to be caught easily.  
  
Lyle rose to his feet and carefully slipped around the corner into the hallway with his back flush against the corridor wall. His hand reached out and finally found the knob to the first door and pushed it open suddenly. No sound - no shot - rang out. He peeked his head around the corner, keeping one eye on the door immediately across the way, and then huffed in frustration. The room was empty. He held his breath and scuttled across the corridor to the opposite door and repeated the motion and peeking. Again, no sound, no shot - an empty room.   
  
Jarod moved across the foyer floor after checking to see that Lyle was no longer on the landing looking upwards. He began climbing the stairs very carefully lest the slightest creak or groan of step give away the fact that he'd managed to get behind Lyle rather than remain on the second floor to face him. He held his breath and peeked around the corner of the landing and frowned. Lyle was nowhere to be seen. He must be on the second floor now. Checking rooms. Getting too damned close to the stairs at the end of the hallway.  
  
The Pretender took out one of the two smaller knives and tossed it in his hand, expertly hefting the balance of the blade and figuring out exactly how to hold the knife in order to throw it accurately. Then he was once more climbing the stairway slowly and carefully.  
  
Lyle had made it to the doorway of the bedroom into which he'd taken Sydney. If Jarod were hiding anywhere, it would be logical that he would be hiding here to protect his mentor. This time he opened the door with a crash and swept the room with his gun extended and ready to fire. "Shit!" he cursed aloud at the sight of the bloodstained bed empty of the wounded captive he'd placed there earlier. "Damn it!" Yes, Jarod had indeed been checking up on - and possibly even rescuing - his surrogate father. But how the hell...  
  
The answer struck Lyle like a physical blow - Jarod knew the layout of the house! Who else would the Triumvirate have trusted to design cutting edge security provisions for their legendary safe houses but the Centre Pretender before he'd escaped. Hell, he'd probably designed half to three-quarters of the security systems for the place - so who better to know how to circumvent them? The enormity of his mistake was suddenly made clear: the Triumvirate had wanted him simply to isolate Sydney so that the psychiatrist could die from poison far away from prying eyes and potential saviors - nothing more or less. But no, he'd had to try to play both sides against the middle and use the situation to capture Jarod once and for all to bolster his chances at advancement. Now, not only was Sydney NOT dying quietly of a poison that would metabolize so that death would be ruled of natural causes, but he himself had called in the one person not only capable but with adequate motivation to mount a successful rescue attempt of a wounded man.  
  
Lyle stepped out into the hall and contemplated the doorway at the far end. That HAD to be the way Jarod had gotten Sydney away - the Belgian had been far too debilitated by his gunshot wound to have gone anywhere by himself, much less know of the other staircase. He cast a suspicious eye to the two sets of doors on either side of the hallway that were between himself and that forgotten avenue of escape. It would be just like Jarod to get Sydney down the stairs and then hide himself in one of those four rooms to lie in wait. Like it or not, he couldn't afford NOT to check each and every one of them.  
  
Jarod crept up the final flight of stairs, listening as Lyle opened one door after another, obviously searching for him. He stood and pressed his back flush against the wall at the top of the stairs when he heard Lyle crash noisily through a door and then curse - Lyle must have reached the room Sydney had been in and found him gone. No doubt with Lyle's mood at the moment, he would have shot Sydney again and killed him for sure if he'd found him still there. Time was growing short. Jarod knew he couldn't wait much longer before Lyle would be at the stairs at the end of the hallway, where Sydney might not be in any shape to defend himself.   
  
He peeked around the corner and saw that Lyle was leaving the doors open behind him. The moment Lyle poked his head into a bedroom to check for intruders, Jarod slipped around the corner and into the opening of the first doorway. He heard footsteps and then another door opening, and took a chance at slipping from that open bedroom into the next one down the hall. He listened carefully again, and there were more footsteps and another door opening. This time Jarod peeked out his head to see just where Lyle was in relation to the stairs at the end.  
  
His eyes still affixed on the door at the end of the hallway, Lyle was pushing through the second to the last doorway on the side. Jarod used the time to slip one more doorway closer to his prey, holding still and holding his breath for the time it took before soft footsteps on the hallway carpet told him that Lyle had again crossed the corridor to check that last door. Jarod peeked and then slipped silently into the next open doorway. He was now less than ten feet from the man. He bounced the knife a couple more times in his hand while he waited for Lyle's attention to focus tightly on the doorway at the end of the hall.  
  
Lyle pressed his ear against the door and listened, then smiled grimly. From behind the door had come a soft, bubbling cough that could only be the result of a carefully aimed bullet piercing a lung and diaphragm on its way to tearing into intestines and whatever else was in its path. The lack of a comforting voice from Jarod was bothersome - had the elusive Pretender really abandoned his mentor in the enclosed stairwell?  
  
At the base of the stairs, Sydney heard a hand rattle the knob of the door above him. He took a deep breath - something that was becoming increasingly difficult as time passed - and raised the muzzle of the heavy gun in his lap until he had it pointing up the stairs, both his hands supported by the steps themselves above his head. He hadn't heard any sounds of struggle or gunshot since Jarod had taken off on his hunting expedition, so the chances were that the person preparing to open the door was Lyle, not Jarod. Even so, he wouldn't fire until he was sure...  
  
Jarod crept very quietly from the bedroom opening. Lyle had his back turned to him completely and was getting ready to open the door...  
  
Lyle opened the door very slowly and peered down. The dim light of the constant stairwell lamp gave a yellow illumination that reflected sickly off of the head of silver hair at the base of the stairs. Lyle opened the door more completely and chuckled. "So. Your protégé isn't quite so smart after all, leaving you here where I could still find you..."  
  
The sound of Lyle's mocking voice above him was all it took. Sydney raised his head and looked upwards at the silhouette, straightened the gun into a firing position and squeezed the trigger. The recoil knocked the weapon clean out of his grasp and down onto the floor at his feet where he couldn't retrieve it. But the figure above moved suddenly out of the light - and Sydney had no way of knowing whether his shot had hit its mark or not.  
  
The bullet from Sydney's gun slammed into Lyle's left shoulder and staggered him backwards out of the doorway. "Why, you stubborn son of a bitch!" the younger man hissed, his fury pushed past the point of rational thought by the agony in his shoulder. "Why can't you just DIE?!"   
  
"Lyle!" Jarod called out just as he saw Lyle begin to raise his own gun to make the killing shot on the helpless man below.   
  
The surprise of having Jarod being so close behind him made Lyle pull the trigger without aiming as he spun around. Even as his mind registered satisfaction at hearing another pained grunt from below, Jarod threw the knife in his hand and buried it in Lyle's left shoulder, not far from the already oozing bullethole. Lyle screamed and started to bring up the gun.  
  
Jarod dropped the other knives and just ran at the man with a savage yell. His hand closed around the arm that Lyle was extending with the gun in his hand and brought it down hard against the doorjamb, and again, and again, until the gun clattered to the floor uselessly. Lyle brought up his right hand in a fist, but a vicious punch to his wounded shoulder had him staggering back once more against the open door where he was then pinned by Jarod's body.  
  
"Sydney!" Jarod called down the stairwell. "Are you OK?"  
  
Lyle tried to bring his knee up into Jarod's groin, but the Pretender had him pinned too well to make the move more than just token. Regardless, Jarod buried his own fist deep into Lyle's gut in a blow that would have doubled him over if Jarod hadn't been holding him upright against the door.  
  
"Sydney!" Jarod called again, his voice becoming frantic. "Answer me!"  
  
"Maybe the old bastard's finally dead," Lyle sneered at him breathlessly, wheezing in pain from the belly blow. He raised his head to look triumphantly into the eyes of the Pretender - only to realize that he'd made yet another mistake, this one decidedly fatal.  
  
Jarod's eyes had gone completely black, and there was a killing fury in their depths the likes of which Lyle had never seen before - not even in the moments after Jarod's brother had died in front of him, dead at Lyle's hand. Lyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise looking into that merciless gaze, realizing he had finally accomplished something that he and Mr. Raines had worked for years to do. He had pushed Jarod to the point that he WOULD kill, and kill willingly and mercilessly out of anger and revenge and hatred rather than only reluctantly out of self-defense or defense of another. There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking into the face of the man who was going to kill him - and kill him soon. "Sydney!" Jarod called once more, his eyes burning holes into Lyle's soul. Only silence answered him. "If there's anybody dead here," the Pretender said calmly and lethally, "it's you."  
  
"Look at it this way," Lyle smiled coldly in arrogant bravado at his future murderer, "I put him out of his miser.. OOF!"   
  
Jarod had buried his fist into his gut again, this time stepping back so that when Lyle began to double over, another fist swinging up from waist-level caught him under the chin and made his teeth snap shut painfully. Lyle tried to stagger out of Jarod's flying fists, but only managed to get himself in a position where Jarod's blows were landing on the side of his face as well as his belly and bloody shoulder.  
  
Jarod pressed in, landing one vicious blow after another in an endless and punishing beating, driving Lyle back away from the gaping stairwell door. Lower lip split, several teeth knocked loose and a cut on one cheek running blood down his cheek later, Lyle finally staggered again and sagged back against the wall to slide to a seated position. Jarod didn't miss a beat - his feet replaced his fists from time to time as he aimed one kick after another into ribs or into the bloody shoulder as often as he could when bending over to pound fist into facial flesh became tiring.   
  
In all the beatings he'd received at the hands of his foster-father, Lyle Bowman, and then later at the hands of Mr. Raines and his Triumvirate trainers, Lyle had never been so systematically, completely and mercilessly thrashed from head to foot. Any bravado or self-control washed out of him and left him limp as the kicks and blows kept on raining down on him, not diminishing in strength or punishment at all. When he tried finally to curl himself up into a fetal ball, the kicks increased in frequency and strength, now aimed at his lower back and kidneys. Breathing had become an exercise in agony - Lyle was certain that at least three of those kicks had snapped ribs like toothpicks and driven them into his lungs, for his mouth continued to fill with the sour-salty taste of fresh blood. One eye was swelling closed and he could feel the first trickle of warm blood sliding down his neck from his right ear.  
  
Finally Jarod reached down with bloody fingers still numb from the pounding they had just administered and grasped hold of the dark locks at the top of Lyle's head and began to pull. Lyle screamed and tried to straighten to fight back again, but Jarod was moving too quickly for his captive to be able to get shaky feet under himself to gain a measure of independent movement. Jarod dragged Lyle on his back by the hair all the way down the hallway, leaving occasional smears of blood behind him on the cream-colored carpet, and then started down the stairs.  
  
Lyle screamed as he felt the floor disappear from beneath his back and buttocks, and then felt the sharp and unforgiving edges of each step thud into his bruised kidneys. His hands grasped at Jarod's grip on his hair, trying to dislodge the fingers and only managing to get himself kicked in the wounded shoulder again for his efforts without ceasing the agonized descent.   
  
Jarod's relentless dragging didn't stop when he got the man to the bottom of both flights of stairs, but he continued to drag him screaming and batting uselessly at the hand in Lyle's hair across the living room floor and through the archway that led toward the kitchen and the bottom access door to the stairwell. At long last, Lyle felt himself tossed hard against the wood paneling of the narrow hallway while Jarod anxiously opened the door to check on his mentor.  
  
While still alive, Sydney was fading fast. Lyle's bullet had indeed found its mark, for there was now a gushing wound in the top of Sydney's right shoulder that had cascaded blood all down the front of his ruined dress shirt. The chestnut eyes fluttered at the sensation of air movement and light, and they finally opened tiredly to take in the sight of Jarod and a very worse-for-wear Lyle sagging against the wall behind him.  
  
"Oh damn," Jarod cursed under his breath and threw the door open wide so that he could get a good hold on his mentor.  
  
"Jar..." Sydney intoned in a gurgling tone, his eyes glued to Lyle and watching in horror as the beaten and bleeding man's hand slowly reached for his ankle and slowly exposing an ankle holster with a small pistol nestled within.  
  
Jarod caught the warning tone within the drowning voice, whirled around and, at the sight of Lyle preparing once more to underhandedly get an advantage, exploded. "NO!" he bellowed, descending swiftly on his former punching bag and removing the gun before Lyle could get his hand wrapped around it properly. He threw the gun into the kitchen with all his might and then turned once more to the treacherous man at his feet.  
  
"Get up!" he ordered, reaching down and taking firm hold of Lyle's hair again and hauling upward. Lyle bellowed in pain and outrage and struck out at Jarod, this time connecting with the Pretender's belly. Jarod lost his grip on Lyle, who sagged back down onto the floor and rolled painfully a short distance away before trying to climb to his feet. Jarod sucked in air painfully for a few moments before, with a low growl in the back of his throat, he went after Lyle again.  
  
Behind him this time, he brought his hands and then forearms up to rest dangerously on either side of Lyle's neck. "This ends here," Jarod growled into Lyle's ear. "For Sydney, for that girl in the lighthouse, for all those other girls you've left scattered across the country, for all the families you've disrupted with your obscene urges..."  
  
"Jar..." Sydney shifted weakly, desperate to keep his protégé from taking this one last step into a darkness that he'd managed to avoid despite his upbringing in the Centre.  
  
Jarod's dark chocolate connected solidly with his mentor's agonized chestnut. "No, Sydney," he said firmly and finally. "It needs to end now. Otherwise, there's no hope of it ever ending." His gaze changed, became almost pleading - asking Sydney's permission.  
  
Sydney could feel himself fading. He could understand Jarod's train of thought too - the Centre or the Triumvirate itself had far too many times bought out law enforcement or officers of the court to prevent Lyle from ever having to face the consequences of his actions. There was no guarantee, if Jarod allowed Lyle to live to be taken into custody, that the same revolving door wouldn't be invoked again - an action that would virtually seal the fate of even more victims.   
  
At last he nodded, and then closed his eyes. He didn't want to witness the execution - the commission of which would mark the supreme perversion of a man for whom he'd had such high aspirations.  
  
Jarod sighed as he finally received his mentor's permission to proceed. Lyle, who had been watching, sighed too and muttered, "Oh shit!"  
  
"That sounds like the fitting epitaph for your tombstone," Jarod hissed into Lyle's ear.  
  
"You don't want to do this," Lyle desperately told the man who literally held his life in his hands. God, he'd been in this same position before - after Jarod had helped Sydney rescue his son - and only the arrival of his twin sister and Centre reinforcements had kept him alive that time. This time, he didn't have even that hope to cling to - still he had to try. "What are you doing? You're supposed to be the GOOD guy - you get your payback but let the legal system handle the final dispensation of justice. Jarod... I know things... about your family... If you..."  
  
Lyle's voice died suddenly as Jarod's forearms tightened and jerked in opposite directions, snapping the man's neck as if a bundle of spaghetti. Sickened, Jarod opened his arms and let the body drop to the floor. Turning his back on Lyle entirely, Jarod leaned through the open stairwell door and dragged Sydney out and the hoisted him up into his arms. "C'mon. Don't you dare die on me, old man - you hang on..." But Sydney was beyond responding now. His body was limp - dead weight.  
  
Jarod carried the wounded man forward into the foyer and set him gently onto a couch. He first tried the solid formal door of the entryway, finding the door locked and the mechanism to unlock it unresponsive. With that, he picked up a statue from a tall pedestal and threw it through one of the stained glass windows to the side of the door, shattering the glass and making an opening big enough for the two of them to slip out of the house.   
  
Not caring what kind of a spectacle he was making, Jarod carried Sydney in his arms like a child up the street to where he'd left his SUV and gently deposited the unconscious and bleeding man on the passenger seat. Breathing hard from the exertion and high emotions, he slipped into the driver's seat, turned the key in the ignition, and squealed the tires making a quick Y turn to head to the freeway and to the closest hospital.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Parker Summerhouse  
  
Miss Parker dove for her cell phone on the coffee table and snapped it open. "What?" she demanded. When there was no immediate voice to answer her demand, only an agonized man breathing and trying to keep from sobbing, she softened her voice. "Jarod? For heaven's sake..." Jarod crying? Her heart skipped a beat. "Oh dear God - no..."  
  
"I got him to the hospital alive," the Pretender told her in a voice that was bleak and defeated-sounding. "He's still in surgery." He paused, obviously having to work hard to control his emotions. "It's been four hours already... He lost SO much blood, Parker..."  
  
Miss Parker closed her eyes and released a small portion of her worry that had done nothing but increase since the end of her last conversation with him. Sydney was still alive for the moment, and so was Jarod. "What about Lyle?"  
  
There was a long pause, and just as she was about to call to him again to make sure that he hadn't disconnected on her, he replied in a sickened tone, "Dead. I killed him."  
  
Sydney had once told her how having to kill Damon to protect Broots' life years ago had eaten away at the sensitive Pretender's conscience. After swallowing hard in an attempt to wrap her mind around the fact that her reprehensible twin actually WAS no more, she knew she needed to at least try to allay his guilt. Sydney would have done no less in her place. "Jarod, you know that was the only way..."  
  
"I hit him," Jarod continued, apparently without having heard her at all. "I hit him, and I hit him, and I kicked him, and I didn't even know I was doing it. I lost it, Parker - I was SO angry at him for shooting at Sydney again I... I didn't realize what I was doing until I was dragging him down the stairs."  
  
"Jarod, it's OK," Miss Parker told him gently again. "You did what you had to do."  
  
"That's just it," Jarod said with a hitch in his voice. "When it came right down to it, I killed him so that *I* wouldn't have to deal with him again. Not because of Sydney, or anybody else - even though that's what I told myself and him - but for ME." Jarod sounded as if he was in tears. "He hurt the people I love - and just kept on hurting people I love - I couldn't take it anymore. I killed him not to protect others, but to make life easier for ME - now *I* don't have to worry anymore about losing anybody I love because..."  
  
"You listen to me, Jarod. Do NOT waste your guilt on that monster!" Miss Parker forced her voice to be firmer. "God only knows what he would have done if you hadn't taken care of him today. I'm sure there are any number of oriental girls who will live long and productive lives now who would have ended up in his dinner bowl otherwise." She paused and could hear him breathing hard and brokenly on the other end of the line. "You know this, don't you? You KNOW I'm right..."  
  
Jarod heaved a shuddering sigh. "I know it - sort of. The fact is that while I may have done the right thing, Parker, I did it for the wrong reasons. For a moment there, I finally became what Lyle and Raines always wanted me to be - an unthinking killing machine." His voice broke. "Even Sydney saw it and looked away."  
  
"Jarod..."  
  
His voice calmed and deepened into a lethal tone that brought her hackles up. "Listen to me, Parker, and do EXACTLY what I tell you. Get Angelo, and get Broots and his little girl, and go. Leave. Get away from the Centre, find a hole to crawl into for a while and don't poke your head out for a good long time. If Sydney survives, and when he's released from the hospital, pick him up and take him into obscurity with you. You do NOT want to be around the Centre anymore."  
  
"What are you going to do?" The voices at the back of her mind were whispering again frantically.  
  
"What needs to be done," Jarod said ominously. "Have you had that implant removed yet?"  
  
"Tomorrow," she answered quickly. "Broots had his removed this morning."  
  
"Angelo has one too," Jarod told her quietly.   
  
"Broots showed me the memo a little while ago," she buried her forehead in her open hand. "I'll take care of it." She took a deep breath. "Tell me what you're going to do, Jarod. Maybe I can help you..."  
  
"No," he retorted quickly. "I don't want you to be any part of what I have to do. You're going to have to be the strong one and get things moving to get you and other innocent people the hell out of there as soon as possible. I won't be able to help you there."  
  
"But what about you?" she asked plaintively. "I can't just walk away..."  
  
"You have to," he insisted almost frantically. "What I need to do..." His voice grew softer. "What I need to do, I don't want any of you seeing. Sydney knew enough to look away when the time came - I need you to look away too, Parker. I don't want you to see what I have to become to do what needs to be done."  
  
"What..."  
  
"LISTEN to me!" Jarod insisted, his tone slipping into mild frustration. "Sydney told me that the Triumvirate has issued a contract on his life. Lyle, I take it, was supposed to be the agent..."  
  
"That son of a bitch..."  
  
"That means they'll try again," he continued without letting her outburst interrupt his train of thought. "I'm going to set up round the clock security for him - if he survives..." Jarod's voice hitched again, and Miss Parker could tell that the thought that his mentor might not survive his injuries was tearing the Pretender apart. "But I'll need you to take over and make sure he gets the care and security he needs as soon as possible..."  
  
"I'll be there, Jarod, as soon as I get that damned implant taken care of tomorrow and lay my hands on Angelo." She reached for a piece of paper and pencil. "Where is he?"  
  
"Sierra Vista hospital in Santa Luisita," Jarod answered quietly.   
  
"I'll talk to Broots and Deb tonight," she promised. "But give me a couple of days, OK? Getting Angelo away from the Centre isn't going to be a walk in the park."  
  
"You never know," he replied with a faint ghost of his old humor, "Angelo may surprise you and be easier to find and extract than you expect. Everybody at the Centre has been underestimating him for years. He understands a helluva lot more than any of you have given him credit for."  
  
"Still, give me a few days to get things arranged here and get to California to take over keeping an eye on Freud." She ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair to drag it back from her face. "Will you still be there when I get there?"  
  
"That depends on Sydney," Jarod stated honestly and starkly. "Do NOT come here if you receive a call from me telling you that he..." His voice broke. "I will have made arrangements for him... so you won't..." Miss Parker's eyes filled with tears as she heard him fighting to control his emotions again. "If he's gone, I'll be gone too. If he's still with us, I'll be around - but you probably won't see me."  
  
"Jarod..."  
  
"This is it, Parker. The game of 'I run, you chase' ends now. We can't afford it anymore - either of us."  
  
She wiped at her eyes, angry at herself for crying. "That sounds an awful lot like 'goodbye', Jarod..."  
  
He was silent for a long moment. "Probably because it IS 'goodbye', Parker. Where I'm going, and what I have to become to do what needs doing, you can't follow or watch - and afterwards, you won't want what I've become anywhere near you."  
  
"Let me be the judge of that," she barked at him anxiously. "You've got my world falling apart around my ears here - for God's sake, let ME decide if you're going to be one of the pieces that falls away for good." She waited for a moment for his response, then yelled at him, "PROMISE me that you'll let me decide, Jarod."  
  
"I can't promise that, Parker, anymore than I can promise that Sydney will still be alive an hour from now."  
  
"You have to give me something to hang onto."  
  
He sighed. "All right. I won't just disappear without at least saying goodbye one more time."  
  
"Promise me." She wasn't going to accept anything less.  
  
He sighed again. "I promise."  
  
"Call me when you hear from the doctor."  
  
"I'll call."  
  
"Take care of yourself, Jarod."  
  
There was a long pause. "Later, Parker." And then the line went dead in her ear. She pulled the little appliance away from her ear and stared at it. In all the time that she'd known Jarod after his escape from the Centre, this was the closest she'd ever come to hearing him end a call properly.  
  
Wishing that she dared have herself a tall glass of Absolut to soften the worries at the back of her mind about Sydney's prognosis, she reached instead for the small bottle of prescription antacid that the doctor had instructed her to start taking that afternoon and through the evening, taking a long and deep slug of the chalk-flavored liquid and grimacing it down her gullet. She immediately got herself a tall glass of drinking water from the fridge and sat down at her kitchen table again. She picked up the cell phone and punched a preprogrammed number.  
  
"Broots, me. Listen, are you and Deb busy?" She softened her voice from that of an Ice Queen boss to a concerned friend, figuring the abrupt change of attitude would key him into the urgency of the matter. "I just got a call from Jarod - and we need to talk. Would you mind very much if I came over for a bit?"  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Santa Luisita, California ~ Sierra Vista Hospital   
  
Jarod paced the length of the long hall outside the operating theatre in which the doctors were frantically working on Sydney, trying to repair two bullets' worth of damage and blood loss. It had been seven and a half long and agonizing hours since they had rolled the unconscious and clearly dying psychiatrist off for emergency surgery. Jarod had taken the time to retrieve a change of clothing from his SUV so he could shed the blood-spattered sports coat and button-down shirt he'd worn when he'd carried Sydney bodily into the hospital emergency room. Now once more garbed in his more traditional black tee and jeans, with his black leather jacket tossed onto a chair in the surgical waiting room, he was getting antsy.  
  
He had been deliberately vague about the details he'd given to the police - who naturally had been called the moment that it had been noticed that Sydney was suffering from gun shot wounds. The officers had noted down his fictitious psychiatrist's name from his latest Pretend attending the symposium, he'd given a statement that had left out the location of the shooting and any names other than Sydney's. Jarod knew he was playing with fire not giving the police all the information they wanted, but there was no way that he wanted them poking around that house on the cliffs of the Pacific ocean.  
  
No, he wanted Lyle to be found by the Triumvirate and nobody else. Lyle's condition, and the fact that it was Lyle's body found at that house and not Sydney's, would be a very effective way of sending a message that something had gone horribly wrong with their plan to just eliminate someone with impunity.  
  
The time had come for him to become exactly what they had wanted him to be all these years - and then turn that violence and lack of mercy and compassion back on THEM. Nobody in any position of authority, either in the Triumvirate or the Centre - would be excluded. The only message these people understood was force and control - and the only way to answer their agendas was with death and destruction. Sydney had known what was starting the moment he nodded his head - that was the reason he'd closed his eyes.  
  
Jarod paused and stared out the window at the well-established residential street with its tall and mature trees and older houses and office buildings. For years he had been - how had Miss Parker once described him? - a 'defender of the weak and the abused'. He would defend no longer. His self-assigned job description had just changed from defender to avenger. The bucolic scene outside the window and his wish to somewhere somehow find a place where he could be with his family was a dream that would never be realized now. The Triumvirate and the Centre had made sure of that the day they had stolen him from his parents - and the time had come for them to pay for their arrogance and lack of human decency. With any luck, and with as much Centre and Triumvirate capital as he could embezzle or steal outright from now on, two organizations that had abused the weak and helpless would learn the TRUE meaning of power and control as they slowly watched theirs slip away.   
  
Top Centre and Triumvirate officials would one by one begin to disappear, never to be seen or heard from alive again. Government and law enforcement officers and officers of the court who had allowed themselves to be bought and controlled by agendas contrary to that of public service would find their deeds exposed. The vast and malignant web of lies, deceit, power and corruption that formed the power base the Centre and the Triumvirate depended upon would shrivel in the heat of public exposure and scandal. And whatever wouldn't die in the light of exposure would die in the darkness of vengeance. It was the only way that the obscenity would finally end.  
  
He felt a hitch grow in his throat, thinking of how one of the last things that Sydney had said to him was that he was proud of him. You aren't going to be proud of me anymore, Sydney, he thought to his mentor sadly. I'm going to hurt a LOT of people - and not all of them the guilty. But the time has come - I HAVE to do this. There has to be a payback sometime for all the evil the guilty had perpetrated on the world - a payback that holds no hope of appeal - or there IS no such thing as justice in the world. And if selling my soul into darkness is the price for putting balance and justice back into the world, then sobeit. Somebody has to do this - considering everything, it might as well be me.  
  
He could only wonder whether or not he would have had his mentor's blessing - or at least forgiveness - on this action as well.  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	6. Epilogue

White Owl   
  
by MMB & NIOMR  
  
Epilogue  
  
White Cloud Lake ~ Sydney's Fishing Cabin  
  
She sat in the warmth of her rental car and stared up at the lights in the cabin, amazed at herself for never before having thought that THIS would be where he would go when it was all over.   
  
She herself hadn't been up to the cabin at White Cloud for over five years - not since she'd kept her promise to Sydney to lay him to rest at last next to Jacob. It had been dicey, getting his body transported up here without catching the attention of anybody remotely associated with what was left of the Centre by then. But considering the years of suffering and pain the old psychiatrist had borne without a single complaint after those two bullets had left him paralyzed and broken in a wheelchair, she hadn't hesitated a single moment in agreeing to his request. She then made very sure, when the time came, that she was as good at keeping her promises as he had ever been at keeping his.  
  
But now it was over. It was finally safe for all of them to come out of hiding and begin to live again.  
  
The list of dead and missing Centre hierarchy was massive - and there was an equally daunting list of dead and missing from Triumvirate ranks as well. Sweepers as well as executives had simply vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Willy, Raines' personal bodyguard, had been the first to go. The disclosure of the facts and circumstances of Lyle's death had rocked Mr. Raines' world to its foundation, and the Chairman had ordered his bodyguard to stay in near-constant attendance - until the tall African-American had simply vanished. Terrified, the oxygen-tank-burdened ghoul had virtually barricaded himself in his Tower office, allowing few if any visitors and taking even fewer phone calls. It wasn't until the lack of phoned in orders from the Tower had gone on for almost two weeks that his own disappearance became known.   
  
The same story played out across Europe and Africa as Triumvirate executives and strongmen vanished right and left. Those who were left behind to pick up the pieces in either organization soon became very apprehensive of the news the next day would bring, as even they began to vanish. Morale within both organizations plunged to an all-time low, with lower-echelon employees simply abandoning ship and fading away in the night between one work day and the next.  
  
The scandals had also begun to arise on all sides - in the US, senators and representatives and Pentagon officials and diplomatic corps personnel were suddenly charged with bribery and abuse of authority in regards to Centre projects, personnel and agendas. The charges were supported by evidence already in the hands of those untouched by Centre manipulations. Government officials and military officers at similar levels in several other nations quickly found themselves equally vulnerable for their Centre or Triumvirate dealings. The mess had grown so uncomfortable that it had eventually resulted in major political shake-ups in Washington, London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Athens, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Nairobi and Johannesburg. Without their army of government lackeys running interference for them on a global scale, any remaining power structure for either entity had been rocked and splintered. As an international consortium, the Triumvirate had been finished quickly, its assets liquidated and absorbed by its many creditors on several continents.  
  
The final straw for the Centre, however, had been a recent series of newspaper exposés in the Los Angeles Times, later picked up and run simultaneously in the New York Times, highlighting the horrors of life for the inmates of the sub-levels of the Centre facility in Delaware. Stock prices had plummeted as the exposé repeatedly shocked and horrified the entire nation, and federal arrest warrants had been sworn out against few remaining Centre employees still brave enough or foolish enough to be working there. The Centre as a research and development colossus became discredited, demoralized, and ultimately financially broken. Finally, six weeks ago, the doors had been closed and locked at the Tower. The complex stood abandoned now, with windows broken out by newly brave Blue Cove vandals once terrified to go anywhere near the once-imposing place. After almost a century of glory, the Centre was an empty shell waiting for the demolition ball to pound it into dust, a 'For Sale - Will Develop To Suit' sign hanging on gates that were chained closed.   
  
Through it all, Miss Parker had held the little band of refugees together by force of will and sheer creativity. There had been six of them to escape the Centre before things began to fall apart - Broots and Debbie, Sydney, Angelo, Sam and herself. Sam had cast in his lot with her when he'd come across her spiriting Angelo out of the Centre without Mr. Raines' authorization in the dead of night. By then, however, news of Lyle's demise was already beginning to rock the Centre. With the discovery of Miss Parker's and Broots' intentions to drop out of sight taking Angelo with them providing illumination for what was surely to come, Sam could suddenly see the writing on the wall.  
  
Jarod provided the little group with more than enough funding from raided Centre and Triumvirate coffers that they were able to purchase several pieces of property and then settle into a tiny community in western Wyoming nestled high in the mountains. There, with the help of some creative forgeries based on the practical expertise of the persons in question, Broots had become a high school math teacher, Sam a deputy sheriff, and Parker an attorney. Debbie had grown up and graduated from the regional high school a year ago and finally left for college in Utah that past September.   
  
For the first few years after their escape, Sydney had cared for Angelo and Angelo for Sydney, each having an ability the other lacked and willingly loaning that ability to the other. Angelo became Sydney's legs and strength, and Sydney became Angelo's more coherent voice. Together, the two of them seemed to gain a certain measure of inner peace as Sydney would sit on the porch watching for hours as Angelo patiently tended their little flower and vegetable garden outside the house in Wyoming. When Sydney finally died from chronic complications that dated back to his injuries at Lyle's hand turning acute, Angelo had withdrawn into a shell that not even Miss Parker could penetrate. He had died two weeks to the day after Sydney's funeral and found his rest in the tiny community graveyard that overlooked a spectacular vista of mountain peaks and valleys.  
  
It had been to Miss Parker that Jarod had finally sent the 'all-clear' message a month ago - the first communiqué she'd had from him in over five years. Since she'd left a message at a pre-arranged private message drop telling the Pretender of his mentor's death, no messages had been passed in either direction. For the years that followed Sydney's demise, the only way she'd known that Jarod was still alive and doing 'what needed to be done' was the stream of news reports detailing continuing disappearances and exposés and scandals. All of them had been big enough stories that even the regional rag had coverage of what was going on.   
  
And yet, he had never given her that final 'goodbye' he had promised her - and like his mentor, Jarod was a man of his word. So once everything that needed doing was finished and she'd received his cryptic 'all clear,' she had systematically settled down to try to locate the elusive Pretender using skills she had allowed to rust with disuse. She had at least a tangible reason for her search other than mere curiosity. Not long before his death, Sydney had entrusted her with a message for his prodigal protégé - a message that she had promised to deliver when it was safe to do so. Added to search skills long unused were the soft voices in her mind, voices Sydney had finally taught her how to understand and control in the last few months of his life - and they had pushed and prodded and led her to where she was that evening.  
  
She climbed from the car and looked around her. It was still as beautiful and peaceful here as she remembered it. The smell of wood smoke teased at her nose, along with the smell of a fresh-water lake only a dozen yards or so behind her. There was a slight chill in the air, as there had been both of the other times she'd been here in the early autumn - once for Jacob's deathwatch, and once to bury Sydney. No doubt the leaves of the trees that stood stoic guard over the cabin would be shocks of golds and yellows and reds in the morning sun, just as they had been both of those times. For now, the trees were just towering black silhouetted sentinels behind the rough wooden building, their outline visible only barely against a starlit sky.  
  
Kelly, the owner of the cabin a quarter-mile down the rutted lane, had called her in Wyoming to tell her that her old friend's cabin was lately showing signs of ongoing habitation. Miss Parker was certain that Kelly was more concerned with vandals and thieves, but she had let her inner voices convince her to fly more than halfway across the continent just to make sure. It was the voices that reassured her that the man she'd been seeking could be found there. From all appearances, it seemed they were right and she'd finally be able to keep her last promise to her old friend.  
  
She walked carefully up the wooden steps in the dark, pausing at the spot where Sydney had broken down and cried in her arms at the impending death of his twin brother all those many years ago. She rubbed a finger beneath her nose, a gesture she'd learned from her aging and ailing Belgian housemate over the years they'd lived together as father and daughter in that tiny mountain town. Tears at this point would not be helpful - for she had no idea what she'd be walking into. She took a deep breath, walked up to the door, and knocked.  
  
For a long moment, all was quiet both within and without the cabin. She was about to raise her hand and knock again a little harder when the door suddenly cracked open so that the inhabitant could peer out amid a beam of warm light. "Jarod?" she inquired, stunned at his haggard appearance.  
  
Still without saying a word of welcome or response, Jarod stepped back and turned his back on the door, which he left ajar, walking slowly around the staircase into the living room of the cabin. Miss Parker gaped for a moment and then cautiously stepped in and closed the door softly behind her. She looked around the cabin, illuminated by the glow of two strategically placed oil lamps and shook her head. She had only been here twice in her life, but the memories were still strong and alive within her. If she closed her eyes, she could almost sense the essence of her psychiatrist friend standing just around the corner, ready to greet her with a wry and lightly accented bon mot.  
  
Sydney had been fastidiously neat, both in his personal and his housekeeping habits. Both of the times that she had visited this place before, other than the unavoidable dust of disuse, the cabin had been immaculate. He had remained fastidious in his dress and hygiene until the end, despite being trapped in a wheelchair. He'd kept his mind fastidiously sharp by tutoring Debbie in Chemistry and Literature or brainstorming defense strategies with her on tough cases. And finally he had kept their house fastidiously tidy to the best of his ability while she worked in her law office - and what he couldn't do physically, Angelo did for him.  
  
Jarod, on the other hand, had a bad habit of living messily - probably an unconscious rebellion against the enforced neatness during the decades of incarceration in the Centre. All of the lairs she had ever visited while searching for him had shown signs of an almost deliberate carelessness about his possessions - all except the Halliburton full of DSAs that literally were his past. That he had always kept very carefully stowed... somewhere.  
  
In the years since then, however, Jarod had evidently changed dramatically. This was not another one of his messy lairs, with discarded food wrappers on the floor and his latest discovery about real life taken to an obsessed level of clutter. Jarod had obviously cleaned Sydney's fishing cabin until it was spotless, and he seemed determined to maintain the immaculate standard his mentor had set for his dwellings. Not a smudge of soot marred the clear glass chimneys of the two oil lamps to mark how much use they'd had of late. There was a half-full mug on the coffee table - and that was the only item out of place in the entire room. Jarod moved slowly back to where he had obviously been building a fire in the freestanding fireplace to warm the cabin as night drew near.  
  
Miss Parker seated herself primly on the edge of the sofa, tucking her purse between her thigh and the arm of the seat and very gently moving the coffee mug so that it was closer to the opposite end of the seat. Finally she rested her eyes on her former nemesis, her former best friend. He still wore black - black jeans and a black tee shirt - but there was something in his overall demeanor that had changed, and not for the better. His movements were those of an old man: slow, cautious and almost painful. His hands didn't shake, but it was as if his entire being had been shaken badly and was only barely hanging together coherently as human.  
  
She waited for him to finish his task in silence, and he didn't look back over his shoulder or even acknowledge her presence until the fire was crackling warmly and he had the screen carefully positioned to prevent free-flying sparks from escaping. Then he rose - slowly, as if his joints didn't want to straighten out again - and shuffled to a seat on the very end of the sofa opposite her. "Why?" was all he asked, reaching for his mug.  
  
"Because you never called or came back to say goodbye," she answered simply, "and because I promised Sydney I'd give you this when it was finally safe." She dug in her purse at her side and pulled out the short envelope with Jarod's name written in Sydney's elegant hand. She held it out to him, waiting for him to take it from her, and then finally set it down on the coffee table within easy reach.  
  
Jarod stared at it for a moment, then looked up to stare into the dancing flames. "How did you find me?"  
  
She folded her hands in her lap. "Sydney finally taught me how to use my inner sense." She looked over at him. "I've always known how to find you. I just never paid attention to it until now."  
  
Jarod's dark chocolate gaze came over to meet hers, and the exhaustion and emptiness in that gaze struck Miss Parker like a dash of ice-cold water in the face. This was not the quick and impulsive Pretender she had known as a child or the impish trouble-maker who had kept her and her team on their toes looking for him for so long. This was a burned-out shell of a man, his soul pulverized by the things he had seen and done until there was nothing left. "Why?" he repeated.  
  
"I told you," she said, shifting nervously beneath that piercing yet depleted gaze. "I had a promise to keep. And..." She dropped her gaze to her hands and then raised it again to meet his in almost the old challenge. "And I wanted to make sure you were all right, now that everything's..." She fell silent, for he had looked away.  
  
"It's quiet here," he said finally as he turned back to study the fire, his voice echoing in the cabin with a hollow sound to it. "It's peaceful. I'm close to nature - there's no phone, no interruptions." He sipped at his mug distractedly. "There's a store down the road where I can get what I need to survive. It's enough."  
  
"What about your family, Jarod?" Miss Parker was shocked. She had always imagined that there would come a time, once all was concluded, that he would resume his search for his lost family. "Aren't you..."  
  
"No." The negation was final. "That was the one thing I had to give up when I started... when..." He rose. "Do you want some tea?" he asked, glancing back at her uncomfortably. When she nodded, he headed off for the cabin's compact little kitchen.  
  
Miss Parker sat for a moment, stunned by what she was seeing and hearing, and then rose to follow him. She leaned against the doorjamb and watched him settle a little teabag into a fresh mug while the teakettle on the stove was starting to bubble and hiss again. "Have you seen them?" she asked gently. "Talked to them?"  
  
"No," he replied emotionlessly. "I didn't want them to see what I... the person I became."  
  
"Why?"  
  
He shot her a sharp glance filled with more pain and repressed anger than she could have ever imagined from him. "They deserve better from me." He looked back to his task. "You all do."  
  
"Then why didn't you call me - and tell me goodbye?"  
  
Jarod's shoulders hunched over painfully, as if he was trying to duck and avoid the question. The teakettle's whistle began to gather steam, and he reached over to pour the scalding water over the little teabag before the shrieking became too shrill. He replaced the kettle on a cooler burner and picked up the mug and saucer. "Jarod?" she asked as he put the dishes in her hand and moved past her back into the living room.  
  
She followed him and reclaimed her seat on the far end of the sofa. "Why didn't you call?" she asked again as she toyed with her teabag before pulling it from the hot water and depositing it on the saucer.  
  
"Did you know that Sydney kept the spare key to this place tucked up high into the rafters of the front porch?" he asked her suddenly.  
  
"Yes," she answered, startled by the apparent twist in the conversation. "I had to use it the last time I was here. But..."  
  
"That way, even if he'd lost the key, he could always get back in." Jarod fell silent and sipped from his mug again. He stared into the flames of the fireplace for a while, then found he couldn't ignore the woman sitting next to him and her question any longer. She was being remarkably patient - it seemed the years had changed her too. "My not calling you was my spare key in the rafters. If the day ever came when..."  
  
Miss Parker was nodding. She understood now. She sipped at her tea, fragrant and very hot. "And until then..."  
  
"He was my only family," Jarod mused sadly, "even though he never... said anything that even remotely indicated that he felt... except once, just before..." He put his mug, empty now, back down on the table, his brows furrowing in pain. That was a very private memory - and the only reason that he hadn't put a bullet in his own brain four weeks ago when his job as avenger was finished. He wasn't ready to share that memory with anybody - not even her.   
  
"He loved this place," he said instead, looking around the room. Miss Parker followed his movement and nodded agreement. The cabin was very much Sydney - she could feel the connection clearly. "I know he wouldn't have approved of... but when... after... I felt like I just had to come back... HERE... where I could talk to him... ask him to forgive..." Jarod looked over at her again. "Can you understand?"  
  
She nodded gently. She understood fully now. This was why Sydney had asked her to deliver his message to Jarod - and she had to give the wily old psychiatrist his due one last time for knowing what was going to happen in the end. He had known his protégé intimately, probably better than the Pretender even knew himself. He had known what Jarod intended to do - and what it would ultimately cost Jarod to finish the job. He'd also known about the connection between the two of them after all - and known that if nothing else survived of his protégé after all was said and done, that connection would still be in place. Even now, over five years dead and buried, Sydney was counting on that connection - and was using it to try to reach out to and minister to his protégé through her one last time.  
  
Jarod seemed to relax a little - he let himself sit back farther onto the sofa so that his back was supported by the comfortable cushions. He hadn't expected her to fully understand, or expected the wash of relief that came over him as he discovered that she did after all. It had been so long since he'd been in the company of anyone or anything but his own dark thoughts... or his victims... He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  
  
"How long has it been since you've gotten any sleep?" Miss Parker's voice was soft, gentle. She had copied his motion after putting her tea on the coffee table and settled back more comfortably into the sofa, with her elbow up and supporting her head as she gazed at him.  
  
He shook his head against the cushion. "I don't sleep," he explained wearily. "The ghosts don't let me sleep." He was silent for a long moment. "The owls wake me up before the ghosts can do much more than just make me wish..." He sighed.  
  
"Still dreaming of owls?" she asked, her mind finding the memory of a phone conversation in the Sim Lab nearly a lifetime ago.  
  
He nodded. "Only now they keep me sane by waking me up before the nightmares get too bad." He shuddered. "There's this one big white owl that keeps flying just past my shoulder..."  
  
He felt the weight distribution on the sofa shift as Miss Parker moved - closer. Then there was a gentle hand at his shoulder, then around his neck, pulling him. "I'll keep the ghosts and owls away," she said softly, finding that he was offering very little resistance to being pulled over until his head landed on her shoulder. "Sleep, Jarod - it's all over now. I'll keep you safe from the nightmares tonight."  
  
Jarod sighed again as he felt that secretly stored spare key in the rafters of his mind turn in the lock and open up to him all the feelings he'd so brutally locked away from himself so that he could become the creature he'd needed to be. His breath hitched as he tipped even further, ending up with his head in her lap and curled on the sofa into a fetal ball with tears pouring hotly from his tightly closed eyes - tears mourning lost innocence and lost chances for happiness. His whole body shook with the strength of the grinding sobs as at last he shed the tears he'd been denying himself. Finally he allowed himself to vent all the grief that he'd built up in his heart at the need to cause hurt to so many innocent people - the spouses and children of the guilty he'd executed or exposed - in order to accomplish the ultimate good of dismantling a gigantic evil. The tears were scalding and painful and filled him until he felt he was drowning in their fiery depths.  
  
"You know," she said in an even softer voice as she ran comforting fingers through his longish hair, "when I picked up Sydney's belongings from the hotel that next day, that he had a white owl's feather in the pocket of his vest?" She could feel his head tip ever so slightly - he was still listening to her, even through his distress. "It had a drop of something on it - I never had it checked, but I could have sworn it was blood." She stroked her fingers through his hair again and again. That feather now resided in her wallet - she rarely went anywhere without it. It had been Sydney's final gift to her, just before he died. Until that moment, it had been his personal good-luck charm. She continued, "When I found it, I remembered the talk you and Syd had had on the phone, and I did a little research on my own. Owls are more than just an omen of death and destruction, Jarod - they're also a symbol of wisdom and guidance through difficult times."   
  
She fell silent and continued to run her fingers through the tumbled salt and pepper locks until at long last she felt him give a deep sigh and relax completely into sleep. She looked up and over at the fireplace with its slowly ebbing flames, and found her eye caught by the sight of movement in the huge picture window beyond. Her eyes widened as she realized that just outside the glass, sitting on a piece of porch furniture, a huge snow-white owl was staring into the cabin through the glass - at her. Its golden gaze was sharp and deeply penetrating. She could feel that gaze all the way to the bottom of her soul and found it supremely comforting - and very familiar.  
  
Jarod shifted in her lap in his sleep, his hand wrapping itself around the outside of her thigh as if to pull a pillow closer under his head. She stroked his hair again and then looked back up into the face of the magnificent bird outside the window. "I have him now, Sydney. It will be OK - he'll be OK. I promise," she vowed solemnly.  
  
With a silent flutter of snow-white feathers, the owl was gone.  
  
Miss Parker reached behind her and pulled down a crocheted afghan to settle around her own shoulders and partially cover Jarod's upper torso so that as the fire died and the cabin cooled, they both could stay somewhat warm. She tipped her head back against the cushion of the sofa and closed her eyes.  
  
FIN  
  
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